


toll a bell for the broken hearted, burn a torch for your sons and daughters

by tempestaurora



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen, Peter's presence is felt even though he's not there a lot, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Teen for language, a farm boy in a Big City, abba voice: take a chance on meeeeeeee, harley-centric, this is my swan song fic and i think its gonna go really well so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-19
Packaged: 2019-10-07 20:19:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 32,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17372633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: “Miss Potts?”“Pepper.”“Pepper. Uh.” Harley rubbed at the back of his neck. “You wouldn’t happen to know what happened, would you?”“Thanos,” she said, quiet. “A titan who wielded infinity stones; they’re the most powerful things in the universe, and he had all of them. He could do—anything. Anything at all. And he chose to destroy half the universe.”“The universe.”“He played the lottery on the largest scale imaginable. You and I are unfortunate winners with no prizes, Harley. Half of the universe dusted when he snapped his fingers, so we don’t know—”“Tony.”She nodded. “We haven’t heard from him, nor anyone who went with him.”AKA: Harley is alone after the world turns to dust, and he travels to New York, hoping that Tony Stark will be able to fill the void his family left. What he doesn't know is that the void Peter Parker left behind is bigger than anyone could've expected.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ciaconnaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciaconnaa/gifts).



> well what's going on here i wonder????? not a wayward sons fic, that's for sure.
> 
> this fic is gifted to ciaconnaa because i love them and you should too and also as a bribe to let me back on the academic decathlon team. pls, i promise i won't ask you if jfk was assassinated ever again
> 
> i wanted to write harley after infinity war, so that's what i've done. it's aimed to be 4 chapters (5 at a stretch), and i've written 3 1/2 of them, so it's daily updates from me, folks. 
> 
> i hope you enjoy this - i've put way too much effort into this fic and into this boy. ty simpkins, if you're out there, i hope you appreciate the work i'm putting into harley because five years on i still love this asshole child.

The day the world turned to ash, Harley was in Miss Margaret’s farm, where he was most days after school. That morning, the news had not stopped showing images of the alien ship; Iron Man going up and not coming back down, the mess the battle caused in New York streets. But after that, it had been quiet. There were rumours that ships were appearing above Africa, most likely over the hidden country of Wakanda – but that was far away.

So far away that Rose Hill, Tennessee was silent, as always, and there was no reason for Harley not to head directly to his job at Miss Margaret’s farm straight after school. He’d swung by the farmhouse at the top of the field, hollering his hello as he ditched his backpack by the fence and took up the wheelbarrow and shovel she’d left out for him.

Miss Margaret liked to use cow manure for composting, and she liked Harley to bring it up to the main house, to be bagged. She also liked it when Harley fixed the broken fencing, the broken radio, car, TV, satellite and oven. Harley Keener was a cow-patty-shovelling-technician and he got paid seven dollars an hour for it.

“Afternoon, Tallulah,” he greeted, rolling the wheelbarrow to a stop near the only black and white spotted cow in the field. Miss Margaret had six cows, all brown bar Tallulah, and Mr Reynolds across the way had two bulls for them to mate with every now and again. They were milking cows, mainly, because Miss Margaret had woken up one morning after a vivid dream about cows and gods and maybe the plague and announced that she was going vegetarian.

Tallulah, by the way, did not respond to Harley’s greeting.

He patted her once on the flank and started shovelling.

In the back of his head, Harley was playing the footage of the donut spaceship on a loop. There were reports of Spiderman getting beamed up, and Harley was pretty sure that Tony and Spiderman were close, considering the recent stories of the two of them showing up to more than one fight together.

Spiderman had been beamed up, and Iron Man had gone up to fetch him.

Neither had come back down.

Though it had been a good five years since he’d seen Tony Stark last, Harley still had a soft spot for the guy. It was worry-shaped, because all he could remember of Tony was a face covered in bruises and panic attacks echoing down a phone line, but it was a soft spot all the same. He didn’t want Iron Man to be lost in space, but he didn’t want Tony to be up there even more.

Just Harley’s questions about the wormhole had been enough to send him spiralling; how would he react if he was actually out there, where the wormhole had ended up?

Behind him, the cows started mooing. Loudly; a symphony-level of sudden, scared mooing.

“What the fu—”

The newest cow patty slipped off the shovel as Harley straightened, watching with his eyes wide and unblinking as Tallulah started to vanish. No—not vanish. She was still there, sort of; her body was crumbling. That was it. Cracks ran across her sides, her legs, face, and then every part of her disintegrated to the field floor.

_Ash._

Harley span suddenly, facing the remains of the other five cows being blown away on the wind. He spat out the pieces that landed in his mouth, running an aggravated hand through his hand and finding it smudged with black.

They were all gone. Dead?

Was this death?

Harley, suddenly alone in the field, gasped for air. “Miss Margaret.”

The shovel hit the ground with a thud, and Harley was off, sprinting back up the field, past the ash, past the manure he hadn’t yet shovelled, the fence he was going to fix this afternoon, his backpack, sitting on the grass.

“Miss Margaret!” he called, his sneakers slamming onto the porch. He yanked back the screen door, shoving his way into the house. “Miss Margaret?” There was the whistling of the kettle – she insisted on using one that heated on the stove – and the sound of the television playing in the living room.

Harley darted through the house, skidded around the corner and into the—

Ash.

Her pink, padded arm chair, fit with doilies and covered with throw blankets, was empty, bar a pile of thick, black ash. Harley struggled to breath properly. How could people be disappearing like this? How could she just _disintegrate?_ That wasn’t a thing that could spontaneously happen.

Harley studied his hands for three panic-fueled seconds. He searched for cracks and flakes, for dark spots – but there was nothing. He was still here. He hadn’t crumbled yet.

But who else had?

Harley turned off the television, took the kettle off the burner and switched off the gas dial. He took her keys from the bowl on the hall dresser and locked up the house when he left. Then Harley grabbed his backpack, stood by the empty, ash-covered field and took three deep breaths.

_Not dead, not dead, not dead._

Then he sprinted all the way home.

 

-

 

“Mama! Mama! Abbie! Are you here? Mama?”

Harley had seen precisely one person on his run through Rose Hill to the bungalow on the other side of town. Rose Hill was populated by three hundred people and double that number in farm animals. And yet it was a ghost town.

 _Ash town,_ his mind unhelpfully supplied.

“Abbie? Where are you?”

Harley wasn’t a runner by nature, and his breathing was the most laboured it had ever been when he finally made it home. But the house was silent, and the car wasn’t sitting out front. _Mama’s probably at work_ , Harley told himself. His mother worked more hours than she didn’t, just trying to keep them afloat – it would make sense that she wouldn’t be at home.

But Abbie—

Abbie was newly twelve and relishing in the independence that came with that. Meaning, she was allowed to stay at home by herself from when school ended until six PM, when Harley got home and made them dinner. Before, she’d come to Miss Margaret’s with him and worked on her homework in the old lady’s kitchen, ignoring the woman puttering around and talking to herself about when the chickens would need to be fed.

Abbie adored being home alone for those three hours.

So why wasn’t she here?

Harley pushed into Abbie’s room without knocking, which should’ve elicited a high-pitched _Oh, my god! Have you ever heard of knocking?_

But there was silence.

Silence and dark flakes of ash on Abbie’s bedspread.

“Shit,” he breathed, stumbling towards her bed. The black mixed with the black already on his hands; it vanished at his touch, crumbling into smaller pieces and slipping through his fingers, dirtying the pink duvet.

Abbie’s homework was spread out on the bed, as was her laptop, the screen long gone dark.

Harley didn’t know how long he stayed there, staring, dull-eyed at the remains of his sister. When he finally got up, though, he washed his hands of his sister’s ash, feeling bile rising in his throat, and made his way over to the calendar.

His mother dutifully wrote her timetable out a week in advance, so all three of them knew where she’d be. It meant that Harley knew which days he was making dinner, which days Abbie needed to take the trash out, and how often he had to decline invitations from his friends on Friday nights, to go to the cornfields or the drive in two towns over, or do anything other than look after Abbie until one AM, when their mother would finally return home and crash in her bed after pressing a kiss to Harley’s temple.

And there it was: _Jailhouse Diner 2-10PM_

Harley dried his hands on his jeans, shoved the house keys back in his pocket besides Miss Margaret’s, and started jogging for the diner.

 

-

 

There was a car crash on the main intersection in town. There was no ambulance or police car, though probably not through lack of trying. One car was completely empty, dotted with black, while the other’s door was wide open, the man sitting in the middle of the road, nursing his clearly broken arm.

“You need help, sir?” Harley asked, glancing down the road to where the Jailhouse Diner sat. There was a large part of him that didn’t want to go there and find his mother having crumbled.

“I’m—I’m alright,” the man said, waving him off. “Just waitin’ for the ambulance. Y’know, I only seen one other fella since the accident? Think the guy in the other car is in need of help, though—haven’t heard from him since the crash and I can’t go over and look, my leg’s shot, see?” Harley looked at the man’s leg, noticing the odd angle for the first time.

“There’s no one in the car,” Harley said. “They disintegrated.”

The man’s brows furrowed. “Disintegrated? What the hell are you on about?”

“I don’t think the ambulance will be getting here for a while, either. There’s probably a lot of crashes like these all the way from the hospital to here.”

Harley wandered around to the back of the car as the man spoke, having recognised the familiar sight of planks of wood, leaning against the back seats.

“Why would there be crashes?”

“Because people are vanishing,” Harley said, finding his voice wavering as he said it out loud. “They’re just disintegrating. Haven’t you noticed how quiet it is?”

He scoffed. “It’s Rose Hill, son. It’s always quiet.”

“Mind if I make a splint out of this? You’re gonna need it.”

The man waved his good hand and Harley got to work, snapping the plank into smaller sizes; leaning it up against the car and kicking it until it broke in two. He used old sacks and blankets from the trunk to tie the splints to the man’s bad arm and leg, ignoring his swearing the whole way through.

It was when he finally finished that he spotted someone else.

“Keener,” they greeted. Harley looked up, finding Josh, Crazy Dan by the gas station’s brother, heading over. “You seen all this? People are just—disappearing, I don’t—”

“Yeah, I have,” Harley replied. “I need to go check on my Ma, you mind looking after him? Maybe get him out of the road?”

“You seen my brother?” Josh asked.

Harley shook his head. “Not since last week when he tried to sell me a head of cabbage in return for my opinions on the JFK assassination.”

Josh cocked an eyebrow and let out a long breath. “Yeah, okay. Go find your Ma—have you seen Abbie—”

“Yeah. She’s.” Harley locked his jaw. He shook his head and watched understanding dawn on Josh’s face.

“Go find your Ma.”

Harley turned and ran down the street.

 

-

 

The Jailhouse Diner was empty bar the fry cook, who lived down the road from Harley and got rides with his Ma whenever he could. His name was Philip, and he locked eyes with Harley, shook his head once, and Harley knew.

He was directed to a pile of ash behind the counter, and then after Harley took a good, long look at his mother’s remains, he turned and went home.

 

-

 

Harley didn’t eat dinner. Instead, he went into the garage, turned on the news in the corner, and started packing his things. He wasn’t sure where he was going or what he was supposed to do; just that whatever needed doing wasn’t going to get done in Rose Hill, Tennessee.

He packed his tools, his external hard drive of designs and inventions, his piñata for a cricket and two weeks’ worth of clothes. He found the camping equipment in the basement; tent, sleeping bag, travel burner stove, and raided the cupboards for food; separating the perishables from the nons, so he knew what to eat first. Then he filled the Mustang with his things, with the money he hid in the eaves of the garage, with the money his mother hid in the cereal box at the back of her closest, with the money his sister hid in the false bottom of her desk drawer. He also, for ten solid seconds, considered taking her diary, for reading material, but it was probably too soon to read one-hundred-and-fifty single-spaced lined pages of her obsessing over whatever boy in her class she had a major crush on every week for the past six months.

Then, as he was leaving the room, he paused, and took the mood ring she wore almost every day of her life, having sworn by its magic. He then took her limited-edition Dora the Explorer watch, too; the one that Tony Stark himself had bought for her to replace the one he’d totally broken (they’d known; Abbie had scratched her name into the back of the one he’d given Tony, and the one he’d returned was vandalism-free).

Then, when everything was packed, he left Miss Margaret’s keys on the front porch, with a little post-it note, saying who’s house they belonged to, and slipped them under the plant pot with the spare key for his own house. Then, finally, he landed heavily in the driver’s seat of the Mustang and stared out the front windscreen.

“New York,” he said aloud, his voice feeling hoarse and unused at a little past midnight. The news hadn’t told him much that it hadn’t already, just that the attack had been confirmed in Wakanda, and there was no certainty about who had survived it, only that it was over.

Harley, considering the ash that surrounded Rose Hill, considering the population of three hundred that was down to four, knew the difference between the fight being over and the fight being _won._

He pulled away from his house and started the drive to New York.

 

-

 

It took him four days to get there.

On the first day, Harley stopped driving only when he started running out of gas. He filled up at a deserted station, no one even working at the counter, and grabbed a bottle of water on his way out.

He fell asleep ten miles down the road in a layby, the doors locked, a hammer in his hand to fight off potential looters, and his eyes stuck on the mood ring around his finger. He didn’t know what the colours meant. But purple didn’t feel very upbeat.

On the second day, he had to take a long diversion, the highways clogged up with cars, and one in particular containing the burning wreckage of a plane crash. He’d stared at that for a little over twenty minutes, sitting on the front of his car. There were a few fire fighters, struggling to douse the flames, but it was clear that they were understaffed and underprepared.

Harley kept driving; no one was going to survive that.

By day three, the remaining Avengers held a press conference that played live on the radio as Harley wove carefully through streets filled with abandoned cars. He wasn’t the only driver out there, but he was very aware of how empty the world felt right now.

The remaining Avengers included Captain America, Black Widow, Bruce Banner, War Machine and Thor. Tony Stark was still unreachable, as was Spiderman, and Hawkeye had reportedly not been seen, which probably meant he was in the same state as Harley’s family. The ‘Rogue’ Avengers, Falcon and Scarlett Witch – and Vision, though Harley hadn’t really seen Vision do much other than that one time in Sokovia, and that other time where the Avengers had a fist fight in a Walmart parking lot, so he wasn’t sure of his Avenger status – had also been dusted with everyone else.

That was a whole lot of dead, even for the Avengers.

On day four, Harley made it to New York.

“Where am I going, _where am I going?_ Stark Tower, probably. Stark Tower? Yes, that sounds good, good, good—”

Harley mumbled to himself as he drove, not liking the silence; not liking the way the radio stations spent half of every hour mourning the dead and how every song they played was either too depressing or too upbeat for their current situation.

He navigated New York traffic, finding it even worse than everyone said, when the roads were blocked off by wrecked and forgotten cars, and the streets were filled with people who’d forgotten their road safety lessons in the four days since the apocalypse began.

“Jeez, I’m a _car_ ,” he complained, stopping _again_ for a woman who didn’t look as she crossed. He honked the horn and flipped her off when she didn’t even glance over. “I’m driving a literal killing machine and you don’t wanna look? That’s fine lady, next time I’ll add to the death toll, that’s okay.”

Eventually, Harley pulled up by Stark Tower, only to find the street crammed with people. “You’re a smart guy,” Harley told himself. “You should’ve expected this.”

There were tens of reporters standing outside Stark Tower, as well as plenty of civilians, protesting and yelling and calling for answers, only to find none in the monolithic chrome and glass building.

Harley drove round the block and found the entrance to the underground car park. He hesitated, knowing that there would be some kind of security system in place, but surely _someone_ had heard of him, right?

Or, at least, they could tell him where to go.

Because Stark Tower was his only answer, even though he knew Tony wouldn’t be there to listen to his questions. It was probably empty; with everyone congregating at the Upstate facility, and the last thing anyone needed was a kid with a perfectly restored Mustang and a dead family, butting in on their attempts to save the world.

But there was nowhere else for him to go. Everyone he knew in the world was ash in Rose Hill, and the only person from out of town was lost in space. At least Tony’s house was nicer than his.

He headed down to the parking lot, pulling to a stop at the check point. It wasn’t manned, but there was clearly a badge scanner and Harley, definitively, didn’t have a badge.

He rolled down the window, pressing the buzzer.

The woman’s voice had an Irish lilt to it. “I’m sorry, if you don’t have a badge, you cannot access the Stark Tower parking lot.”

“My name’s Harley Keener,” he said, leaning out the window. “I’m a friend – sort of – of Tony Stark’s? He gave me this car, actually, and I helped him out during the Mandarin thing in 2013?”

“I’m sorry, but you do not have access to this parking lot. Please turn around.”

“Please,” Harley said. “Just—ask someone. Ask Miss Potts or JARVIS or _someone_ about me. I don’t know where to go, and everyone I know is dead, and I really need to talk to someone that could help me, okay? Please. Just ask someone, and they’ll know who I am.” Hopefully. Dear God, hopefully.

There was a pause and it extended so long that Harley thought the woman on the other side was done with him. He almost considered turning the car around, parking it somewhere else and trying to get in through the front door. But eventually, she spoke once more.

“Miss Potts has been notified of your arrival. Please park in bay 16C and proceed to the elevator.”

“Thank you! Thank you.”

Finally, a break. A slither of the world’s largest weight, resting on his chest, slipped off, as the barrier raised, and Harley drove into the underground parking lot, past twenty-or-so silent, beautiful sports cars, each with personalised plates and body work. He parked in the correct bay, and climbed out of the car, taking his backpack with him. He’d filled his backpack with the important things, like his lock picks and hard drives, his laptop and chargers.

He took the walk to the elevator a little slower than necessary, eyeing Tony’s cars as he went. He didn’t call the elevator, it simply opened upon arrival, and when he stepped in, the doors slid shut and the pod began moving automatically.

“Mr Keener,” a voice said above. It wasn’t JARVIS, which was strange, because Tony had said that JARVIS ran everything in his buildings. Harley recognised the same Irish lilt as the woman in the intercom box. “You are headed to the Penthouse level. Miss Potts will meet you in the main living room; if she is not there upon arrival, please wait there for her.”

Harley glanced around the elevator, not immediately noticing the camera until he saw it; a tiny dot a different shade of black in the control panel by the door; and smiling. “You’re an AI, right?”

“That is correct.”

“I thought JARVIS ran everything.”

“I am FRIDAY,” the voice replied. “JARVIS was unfortunately destroyed during the fight against Ultron in 2015; the remainder of his code was used to create Vision.”

Harley frowned. JARVIS had been dead three years – though, could he die? Was he even living? He didn’t know but felt strange that another person – being? – he’d known was now gone, like everyone else.

“It’s nice to meet you, FRIDAY,” Harley said, because his Mama raised him with manners.

“Thank you, Mr Keener. It’s nice to meet you, too.”

 

-

 

Harley got whiplash looking at the Penthouse of Stark Tower. Having grown up in a bungalow where Abbie’s bedroom had originally been the walk-in closet for Ma’s, with the doors changed around, the Penthouse was a long way from anything he knew.

Hell, Harley had been standing in a cow field shovelling manure four days previous.

Now he was in a billionaire’s apartment in Manhattan, staring as _the_ Pepper Potts entered the room. She, too, was a long way from Harley. He was wearing the same clothes he’d pulled on the morning people turned to ash – she looked as beautifully put together as he’d seen on the news for the past five years.

The only thing that was the same about them was the purple under their eyes.

“Harley?” Miss Potts smiled at the sight of him, her heels clicking against the floor as she made her way over. When they reached, she held him at an arm’s length, her eyes surveying his face, before she nodded, once, with purpose. “It’s good to see you. It’s _really_ good to see you.”

Harley smiled. “It’s good to see you too, Miss Potts.” _It’s good to see someone alive._

She dropped her hands. “You drove here in the Mustang?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Pepper,” she corrected. “Tony showed me pictures of the makeover he did to your garage.” Her smile was so incredibly soft. “He was really grateful for your help. Said you’d grow up to be something great, one day.”

Harley sniffed, and Pepper’s expression shuttered a little.

“Alright,” she said. “I’m heading back to the compound tomorrow morning, and if you’re here, I expect you’re planning on staying.”

“Nowhere else for me to go.”

“The quinjet leaves tomorrow at nine thirty,” she said, “and I expect you to be on it. Until then, I’ll show you to the guest room. Shower, take a breather – I’ll have someone bring up your car—”

“Bring up my _car?_ ”

“There’s a freight elevator that runs throughout the building,” she said. “We don’t know if you’ll need a car or not at the facility, but better safe than sorry. And it’s a large quinjet. It’ll carry it, fine.” Pepper ushered him through the apartment as she spoke, down a hallway lined with art and plants, towards a nondescript door. “There’s plenty of food in the fridge; eat what you want. Use the television, the wifi, I don’t mind. I have another meeting to get to, but I’ll be back around eight—”

“Miss Potts?”

“Pepper.”

“Pepper. Uh.” Harley rubbed at the back of his neck. “You wouldn’t happen to know what happened, would you?”

Pepper’s expression relaxed, like the tension that came from organising to avoid reality was finally released. She looked sorry, and regretful, and a hundred other negative emotions that really didn’t suit _the_ Pepper Potts.

“Thanos,” she said, quiet. “A titan who wielded infinity stones; they’re the most powerful things in the universe, and he had all of them. He could do—anything. Anything at all. And he chose to destroy half the universe.”

“The _universe._ ”

“He played the lottery on the largest scale imaginable. You and I are unfortunate winners with no prizes, Harley. Half of the universe dusted when he snapped his fingers, so we don’t know—”

“Tony.”

She nodded. “We haven’t heard from him, nor anyone who went with him.” _Spiderman._ “So, we just don’t know.” Pepper stepped away from Harley and the guest room door, and Harley watched as she composed herself so quickly, he would’ve missed it had he blinked. “Happy might swing round while I’m out; FRIDAY should’ve informed him of your arrival and he’ll probably want to give you an access badge.” She turned, to start off down the hall, but Harley didn’t turn to his door, sensing she wasn’t done quite yet.

He was right. Pepper was only two steps away when she stopped, hesitating before looking back to him.

“Your family?”

“Gone,” he said. “Just like everyone else in Rose Hill.”

Pepper nodded. She looked so incredibly tired, Harley wondered how she was still standing, let alone looking as put together as she did. “I’m sorry.”

Harley tried for a smile and missed by a long shot. “So am I.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> harley's good at fixing things

The Penthouse was too quiet after four days of talking to himself and listening to the radio and the screaming of people still stuck in the despair of mourning on the side of the road. There was an access badge on a lanyard waiting for him on the kitchen island when he finished his shower – the water was so good and so hot and he’d never felt such perfect water pressure in his life – and turned on the television, to make the silence stop.

It was already mid-afternoon, so Harley waited to feel hungry, passing time by staring at the files on his laptop, staring at the depressing news on the television, until he gave up and stood out on the balcony, to stare at something else. New York from up high was something to behold, that was for sure.

He pinpointed six fires raging from his vantage point, saw ambulances careening down streets and police cars flashing blue. From the top of Stark Tower, though, he couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t hear the people on the street below him, or the protesting growls of car engines, stopping every few seconds for pedestrians not looking as they crossed the road. He stayed out there until the sky grew dark, watching helicopters pass him by; police and ambulance and news stations; until his stomach finally made a noise to make him pay attention and Harley went in search of food.

He was eating when Pepper returned, and she stood behind the sofa, watching the news that Harley had long stopped paying attention to.

“How are you doing?”

Harley glanced back over his shoulder at her. She somehow looked even more worn down than she had that afternoon. He turned back to the television; there was a brief mention of the _unknown boy spotted on the balcony of Stark Tower_ , with footage of him from the helicopter’s perspective, and he shrugged.

“I don’t like the silence.”

“Yeah,” Pepper said. “Neither do I.”

 

-

 

There were sleeping pills in the en suite cabinet, and Harley was thankful for them. They made the quiet go away, forced him to rest.

In the morning, he ate breakfast at the kitchen island, his clean clothes feeling softer than his four-day-old ones ever had. He and Pepper made their way to the quinjet on the top level of the tower.

He’d never seen one in person, and it was bigger than he’d expected; all sleek and grey, capable of holding at least thirty people sardine-canned inside, surely. Pepper nodded him onboard, where his car was sitting, still packed in the way he’d left it. The bay door hissed closed behind them, and Harley glanced up front to find the cockpit empty, but the engines powering up anyway.

“You gonna drive this thing?” Harley asked, though he knew she wouldn’t.

Pepper smiled. “Autopilot. Oh and,” she knocked on the metal near her head as she strapped herself into a seat for lift off, “retroreflective panels.” He raised his eyebrows, surprised, slipping into a seat as the quinjet rose from the platform. “This is one of Tony’s planes,” she said. “He liked the idea. There’s a few Iron Man suits with the same tech; he was working on putting it into the next Iron Spider suit, too.”

“Iron Spider?”

“Spiderman,” she said, then lowered her voice with a teasing smile, as if Tony was here and it was a secret to be kept from him. “He made them matching Iron suits. Same colour scheme and everything; it’s adorable.”

Harley exhaled his smile. He liked that there were people who Tony cared about; that there was someone to take under his wing, and who made him feel better in a way Harley hadn’t known many people to. He hadn’t met Colonel Rhodes during the Mandarin escapade, nor Pepper, but Tony had mentioned them with a different look in his eyes to how he mentioned anyone else.

When they were cruising, Harley stood and watched the screen in the cockpit confirm the activation of the retroreflective panels. _He_ did that. This was him. Harley sat in the co-pilot’s seat and watched New York pass him by, a whole city he hadn’t yet seen.

 

-

 

Harley’s guest room in the compound was even bigger than his one in the Tower, but he didn’t stay long to look around it. Not after he heard the painstakingly familiar voice of Captain America coming from down the hall. He’d heard that same voice in every school PSA shown in the last five years. _So, you got detention_ was a phrase Harley had heard one too many times.

Harley was a little hesitant to head towards it at first, but he was also planning on staying in the facility for the foreseeable future (or as long as Pepper would let him, considering he was now an orphan and would probably need to alert child protective services at some point, if that still existed in the end times), and would meet the Avengers eventually.

He’d always thought they were so cool as a kid. They couldn’t afford the action figures, but the friends he eventually made had bought them some time after New York and were pretty obsessed with playing with them. After they’d managed to somehow confirm the whole Tony Stark Broke Into My House story, they’d let him be Iron Man in their games whenever he wanted. (Though, mostly, he wanted to be the Hulk. Iron Man was great and all, but he much preferred Tony Stark.)

He wandered into the living room, some way down the hall from his room, finding Captain America talking to two familiar men. One was Colonel Rhodes – aka War Machine – and the other was Bruce motherfucking Banner. _Hulk._

They all looked over when he walked in and blinked in surprise.

“Uh,” Bruce said, slightly less eloquent than Harley would’ve expected. “Has this child been here the whole time?”

“I think we would’ve noticed a child,” Cap replied, though he seemed unsure about those words, considering Harley’s existence in the room.

Harley quirked an eyebrow before Rhodes asked, “You got a name, kid?”

“Harley. Keener. I think I live here now.” He shrugged and watched the realisation dawn in Rhodes’ eyes.

“No shit,” he said, smiling. Rhodes moved forward, mechanical legs whirring as he reached out a hand, shaking Harley’s. “Tony said you were smaller.”

“Well, it’s been five years,” Harley replied. “People tend to grow.”

“Little shit too, if I recall.” Rhodes placed a hand on Harley’s shoulder, turning to the other Avengers in the room. “Harley helped Tony out during the Mandarin fiasco in 2013.”

Bruce pulled a face. “The time he threatened a terrorist?”

“That’s the one,” Harley agreed.

“I’m sure you’ve heard about Tony, uh…” Cap glanced upwards and Harley nodded.

“Yeah, but the world thought he was dead a few times before,” Harley replied, feeling a little less confident about the words than he made them sound. “If he’s out there, we’ll find him.”

Rhodes’ hand on his shoulder squeezed. “Is it just you, or is your family here too?”

Harley spared a glance for the Dora the Explorer watch on his wrist. “Just me,” Harley said, and everyone in the room seemed to get it.

 

-

 

He met the others that seemed to be a part of the Avenger scene – bar Black Widow, who was apparently searching for Hawkeye – in a dark wood office that might’ve once been Tony’s, though it felt a little too old fashioned for a futurist. There weren’t many of them. Thor, with his hair shorn short, Scott, otherwise known as Ant Man, who’d caused a lot of ruckus over the past four days with his apparent time travel, and a woman called May, who Harley didn’t recognise at all, but seemed just as involved in the goings-on of the compound as anyone else.

She also reminded him of his Ma, in the strangest of subtle ways. It might’ve been her thin-rimmed glasses, or the way she wore her hair, or how she seemed a little run down, but still filled with the ability to nurture. Upon meeting him, she’d brushed his hair from his forehead and asked for his name and age and interests, and when he’d said he liked building things her face had turned wistful and Harley had been struck with the realisation that she had lost someone who he must’ve reminded her of.

Pepper had introduced Harley to anyone he didn’t know and told the rest of the group that he’d be staying for as long as he wanted to (and told him, quietly, that she’d arranged for temporary guardianship, just in case anyone wanted to get finnicky about his being there).

Harley settled into a dark leather chair that was probably more expensive than his house, watching in the quiet as the group discussed what they were supposed to do next. On a blue holoscreen there was a list of names that just kept scrolling of people who were gone or missing. _Princess Shuri. King T’Challa. Peter Parker. Laura Barton. Sam Wilson._

It just kept going and going and going, and Harley only recognised a few of the names in front of him.

“And Tony,” Steve – because Cap had told Harley to call him Steve – said, breaking through to Harley’s zoned out state. “I don’t—if he’s still up there, we don’t know where.”

“I could travel to him if we did,” Thor agreed. “Well, probably; I’m unsure what capabilities Storm Breaker gives me. My hammer let me fly, you know,” he added as a side note to Harley, who absolutely knew; he’d written a school report on Thor when he was fourteen. He had lots of questions he couldn’t wait to ask, starting with the fact that his hair was short now.

“The scanners aren’t picking anything up,” Rhodes said. “We can tell where his suit disappeared from the satellite reach – Spiderman’s too – but we haven’t seen anything like it since.”

“If he was even trying to get a message to us, how would we even know?” Steve asked.

The room was quiet for a moment and Harley shrugged. “You tried the Stark Secure Server?”

All eyes in the room landed on him. “The _what?_ ”

Harley looked at Pepper, who’s eyes were dawning in realisation.

“You’re a genius,” she said.

“I know.”

Pepper moved to the holoscreen, then hesitated at the desk, unsure how to search for it. “FRIDAY,” she asked, “can I access the Stark Secure Server from here?”

The screen in front of her changed, immediately scanning Pepper’s face and blinking into life. “Stark Secure Server accessed, retinal scan confirmed: Pepper Potts.” The screen held one message, and Pepper pressed the screen, her face instantly falling as she read the date.

Tony’s voice filled the room. _“Pepper, it’s me. I’ve got a lot of apologies to make and not a lot of time, so first off, I’m so sorry I put you in harm’s way. That was selfish and stupid, and it won’t happen again—”_

Pepper stopped the recording. “That was 2013,” she said, her face blank. “It’s not new. He would’ve sent a new message if he was—out there.”

Harley swung his legs down from the armchair, approaching the screen. “Rhodes said the suit is out of range, right?” Pepper nodded. “Then let’s just expand the range.”

“Of satellites?” Rhodes asked. “That’s a big ask.”

Harley shrugged, thinking back to Miss Margaret’s farm; broken fence, broken oven, broken television. “It’s just a big radio,” he said. “I could probably do it if I had the access codes to Tony’s tech.”

Pepper’s eyes were full when she looked at him, and he wondered if he was wrong to place hope there. If he was wrong to bring up the chance. “I can do that,” she said. “I can give you the access codes.”

“Pepper,” Steve said, quiet. The two of them turned from the holoscreen, to the room of concerned Avengers. “And if there’s still not a message—”

“Then we’ll know,” she said. “But until then, we don’t, so.” Pepper flicked her hair over her shoulder. “I’ll take Harley to Tony’s lab so he can get working.”

“Pep—”

“You said it yourself, Rogers. Earth has lost her best defender, so we can’t go making plans to save the universe until we know whether he’s out there or not.”

Harley followed Pepper out of the room.

 

-

 

It took a lot of negotiating with FRIDAY for all the access Harley eventually received. They were arguing for codes, passwords, files, data; Pepper used every loophole and override code she knew, even reciting one for a Peter Parker in hopes that it would get her what they needed. And, after a few hours of arguing and reading lists of numbers and letters from her phone, Harley had all the access he needed at his fingertips.

Then he was alone in the lab, sitting in Tony’s chair, at Tony’s desk. Pepper was long gone for another meeting, less to do with Stark Industries and more to do with saving the world – though, how anyone could save the world when half of it was already gone was beyond Harley.

So, he did what he knew – just on a much bigger scale than he was used to – he fixed things. The Stark Satellite was a masterpiece of coding and information and its range into space was already pretty far – Harley just had to make it farther.

And it was not easy, nor fast. He watched news reports and had FRIDAY find the direction the ship had gone in; he controlled the manoeuvrable plates and bots aboard the satellite to adjust the dish and strengthen the range. He didn’t sleep much, just had naps in Tony’s chair, awakening to find a blanket over his body that hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep. And he didn’t eat much, either, unless May walked in and placed a sandwich in front of him, refusing to leave until it was gone.

It took three and a half days to increase the range; though Tony could’ve done it in one.

Still, it was better than sitting in Rose Hill, not helping anyone at all.

This way, at least, they’d know.

“Can I access the Stark Secure Server?” he asked aloud, typing at a keyboard with one hand and studying a screen with another. On day one he’d pulled a keyboard from a desk in the corner of the room – one filled with papers and beakers and handwriting that certainly wasn’t Tony’s – because Tony’s keyboard was made of symbols and signs that only Tony would’ve known, rather than the English alphabet.

The camera on the monitor scanned Harley’s face, and for a split second he worried that he wouldn’t have access, but— “Stark Secure Server. Retinal scan confirmed: Harley Keener.”

When the hell Tony Stark had a chance to complete a retinal scan on Harley in the first place, he didn’t know, but there it was, the server opened before him, that one message from 2013 sitting on the screen. The date was the same day Harley had met Tony; the night that he’d heard the door to the garage bust open, and Harley had crept out of bed, pulling on his coat and hat, searching for his potato gun in the dark and trying not to wake his baby sister, asleep in her room.

Mama was at work, and Harley was the only one protecting the house; so he’d stealthed his way into the garage to confront the stranger, sitting at the work desk, pulling something out of his arm with a pair of tweezers.

The stranger had tricked him into using his only ammo to prove that he made a good potato gun. _Stupid,_ he’d thought at the time.

But the stranger had been _Tony Stark_ , had been Iron Man; had handed Harley the anti-bullying device that Harley fiddled with now, in return for help and a tuna sandwich. Harley had only used the device twice in his life – once when the burning man had held him on his lap, refusing to let go, and another time, some months later, when he’d been at the diner and some jack-off had tried to put the moves on his Ma. She didn’t want it, he wasn’t having any of it, and the device was pretty persuasive in making the asshole move away.

An absent part of his mind wondered where he’d be today if he hadn’t spent three days in 2013 helping Tony Stark take down a terrorist.

The screen beeped, and the message from Tony in a phone box, wearing a poncho, moved down a slot, a new message arriving above it. Harley darted forward in his seat. It was marked as having been sent yesterday evening, around the same time May had walked in with orange juice and dinner, her eyes caught on the desk in the far corner of the room the whole time she was there.

His hand shook as he clicked on it.

This time, there was video with the audio. Tony Stark, looking worn and starved and beaten and bruised, in low, green-blue-tinted lighting. Like he was inches from death.

_“This thing on? Hey Miss Potts. If you find this recording, don’t feel bad about this. Part of the journey is the end. Just for the record, being adrift in space with… zero promise of rescue is more fun than it sounds. Food and water ran out—four days ago, oxygen will run out tomorrow morning, that’d be it…”_ Tony leaned forward, looking at the camera. _“When I drift off, I will dream about you. It’s always you.”_

“Tony,” Harley breathed, the message switching off. He felt that he was not the one who was meant to see it, truly, but he couldn’t care less. _Oxygen will run out tomorrow morning._ It was nine-thirty-four am; he’d worked through the night.

“FRIDAY,” he said, “get everyone in here. I need the location this message was sent from and _someone_ ready to get him back.”

“Triangulating,” FRIDAY confirmed, another monitor lighting up with a range of coordinates and numbers, the satellite scouring space for the origin of the message. _Too slow, too slow, too slow – there!_

The door slid open behind him. “Harley,” Pepper’s voice said. “Did you find something?”

The monitor flashed once. “Yeah,” he said. “I found Tony. We don’t have much time.”

 

-

 

Waiting for Thor to save the day was longer than anything else Harley had ever experienced. Longer than that one biology exam he’d crammed for the night before and still not known any of the answers to. Longer than his Ma’s labour with Abbie that he remembered, vividly, despite being five at the time, as he waited on a hospital chair all through the night for a little sister he hadn’t wanted yet. Longer than the night his father said he was going out for scratchers, less than two months later, and Harley waited up for him to come home.

This was longer than that. This was longer than the infernal ticking clock of the examination hall, than the grunting breaths of his mother on the bed through her contractions, than the way his mother lit up a cigarette in the kitchen, though she really shouldn’t have, like she _knew_ he wouldn’t be coming back.

He waited on the roof, because the inside was making him antsy. He crossed his legs and stared up at the morning sky, beautifully blue despite the chaos the world was in, and waited. After a while, May joined him, and he glanced over. He’d put the pieces together with relative ease, when he’d been handed enough facts throughout his three-day stay.

May’s last name was Parker, coinciding with the _Peter_ he’d caught sight of on the list of missing people. The desk in the corner was filled with formulas and beakers and designs for wrist gadgets, the words _web shooters_ written on each and every blueprint. The desk was in _Tony’s_ lab, which, as far as Harley had heard, Tony Stark tended to work alone, not with an intern or assistant in the corner. And Spiderman was missing.

“They’ll come back,” Harley said, nudging his arm against hers.

“Hm?”

“Tony and Peter,” he replied. “They’ll come back.”

She only looked at him for a moment, as if sizing him up, before turning her eyes back to the sky. “I hope so,” she said. “He wasn’t in the video, though.”

“Neither was that wizard they went after, Strange,” Harley said. “Or that talking racoon’s friends, but they’re probably fine, too.”

(The talking racoon had appeared on Harley’s second day in the lab, sworn Harley out when he didn’t stop staring, and left with a few tools that he needed to build something destructive.)

May hummed and took Harley’s hand in her own. He wondered if it was painful for Harley to be like her Peter; if she looked at him and saw the boy she was missing. He didn’t get to wonder this long, however, because a dot in the sky began to burn with re-entry, and the blinding light that came with Thor’s magical presence began to shine right behind it.

“They’re back,” May said, standing. Harley stood with her and they watched from the roof as Thor settled the ship down, a glowing woman by his side that Harley didn’t recognise, and the bay door hissed open. A blue woman emerged first, half her skin shining silver metal. She took one look at the area, before heading back into the darkness of the ship once more and helping another figure out into the light.

“Tony.”

Thor picked up Tony into a bridal carry, and the four of them walked across the lawn to where the Avengers were standing in a daze. Harley could barely hear their voices, but Thor’s booming one announced clearly enough that they needed food and water and needed it right now. The Avengers moved into action, of course, ushering them all back into the compound and towards the medbay, but May and Harley stayed standing on the roof.

They kept watching the ship. Kept waiting for anyone else to walk out into the light at last. And May’s hands started shaking more the longer they stood there, and Harley gritted his teeth because he should be happy (he was, of course he was) that Tony was back, but here he was, promising Peter and a wizard and the world, and here reality was, falling short.

They stayed on the roof, waiting. But no one else emerged from the ship.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> someone's back

Pepper held Harley in the tightest of embraces when he finally made his way to the medbay. “Thank you,” she whispered into his hair. “Thank you so much. I wouldn’t have even thought— _you_ did this, Harley. You brought him back. Thank you for being here. Thank you so much.”

He held her back just as tight but said nothing.

When Harley entered Tony’s room, he was asleep. There was a soft, steady beep of a heart monitor in the corner, a few plastic medbay chairs around the room, and Tony, hooked up to wires and tubes to bring him back to himself. Harley settled in the chair closest to his head, studying the weary lines on Tony’s face, how thin and frail he seemed; such a far throw from the man who’d broken into his garage and gone on to take down a terrorist.

While Tony slept, Harley kicked his feet up onto the side of the bed and turned his phone on for the first time in a few days. It had run out of charge early on and he hadn’t bothered to plug it in, not when finding Tony was number one on his priority list. Now, as it flashed awake, only a single message appeared on screen from almost a week ago.

 

**_JOSH:_ ** _Found Dan. He’s okay. Found him in a dumpster out behind the laundromat. Ambulance finally arrived and took the car crash guy to the hospital. If you’re still in town, we’re rounding up all the farm animals and bringing them down to Old Man Arnold’s place because it’s got the biggest field. See you around._

He sent a reply about Miss Margaret’s house keys being under the plant on his porch, mentally berating himself over forgetting the animals in town that hadn’t been dusted away. He could’ve rounded up Miss Margaret’s chickens, or checked on Mr Reynolds’ bulls, or—

“I haven’t been gone that long, right?” a voice said, muffled and quiet. Harley looked up. “‘Cause I didn’t have a fourteen year old son when I left, so I wasn’t expecting to come back to—”

“I’m seventeen, asshole,” Harley said, light.

Tony nodded slowly. “Time flies when you’re not fighting terrorists.” He cracked a weak smile. “Good to see you, Keener.”

“You too, old man.”

He hummed a little. “I like the watch.”

Harley glanced down at the pink Dora the Explorer watch that he couldn’t bring himself to take off. “Thanks. Abbie keeps – kept – it pride of place on her display shelf.”

Tony clearly caught the slip and nodded. “Pepper said you saved me.”

“Pretty sure Thor and that glowing woman did that.”

“ _You_ did,” Tony said. “You found me.”

Harley didn’t like looking at the sincerity in Tony’s eyes and focused them on the bedspread. “I improved your satellite is what I did.”

Tony scoffed. “I’m sure I’ll be getting complaints from my loyal customers about their signal cutting out any minute now,” he replied. “But—thanks, kid. Harley. I’m glad you’re still around.”

“Yeah, same here.”

“Did you see your Mom—”

“I was in a cow field when it happened,” Harley interrupted.

“Why the fuck were you in a cow field?”

Harley cracked a smile. “It’s my after school job.”

“It’s not.”

“It is. I shovel manure and fix things around the farm.”

“I upgraded your entire set up, gave you thousands of dollars worth of equipment and bought you a perfectly restored Mustang—”

“I was twelve, I couldn’t drive—”

“—and you shovel _manure_ to make money?”

Harley laughed, and stopped abruptly when he realised it was the first time he had done that in a week. “For seven dollars an hour, yes.”

“ _Seven?_ Keener, I didn’t raise you to take such poorly paying jobs in the manure shovelling industry.”

“Stark, you didn’t raise me at all.”

“If I had, maybe you wouldn’t be so acquainted with the runnings of a farm.”

“You’re gonna hate it when I tell you about working at Mr Reynolds farm when I was fifteen. He had a slaughterhouse out back for the chickens and he let me—”

“Nope! Nope, Harley, I’m dying and frail, stop that right now. A waste of your talents. I’m thankful you at least retained some knowledge between the murdering of chickens and the shovelling of manure to figure out how to work the satellite and gain access to the Stark Secure Server—”

“Yeah, speaking of which, how do you have my retinal scan?”

Tony paused. “I’ll tell you something: I have _no idea._ ”

Harley didn’t stop smiling for an hour.

 

-

 

Tony got bored in bed quickly, so it was only a day before he was up and about, dragging an IV stand around with him until a Korean doctor named Helen Cho finally agreed to disconnect it. He started eyeing the mess Harley had made in his lab and then analysing the mess Harley had made with his satellite (“Oh yeah, see, all of Eastern Europe has no signal during the end of the world because of you—see this? That’s a dead spot. And it’s the size of Russia.”).

After that, Tony filled in the gaps the blue woman – Nebula – had left out about the fight on Titan, which apparently she’d relayed to the Avengers when Harley was either in Tony’s room or standing on the roof with May.

“We were close,” Tony said, “to getting that glove off him as well. But it didn’t work, and I got stabbed and a moon was thrown—”

“A _moon_ ,” Harley said, crossed legged on the sofa in the dark wood office by Tony’s side. Tony cracked half a smile.

“A goddamn _moon._ ”

“Where was it thrown?”

“At me.”

“At _you!”_

“Tell me this doesn’t remind you of Peter,” Rhodes whispered to Pepper, only a few seats away. Harley pretended he hadn’t heard and, it seemed, so did Tony. May was across the room, and her expression didn’t flicker.

“And Strange… he gave up the time stone to keep me alive,” Tony continued. “He said he saw into fourteen million realities, so I’ve been thinking that whatever one we win in, I’m alive past that fight. That’s the only reason I can think of that he’d give up the stone for me.”

The room fell silent. Harley’s Dora the Explorer watch beeped and he it turned it off as May rose from her seat.

“I’ll check the oven,” she said, and vanished out the door. She’d been spending her day cooking, though as far as Harley could tell, she wasn’t great at it. He still complimented whatever she made though, painfully reminded of his mother’s cooking with every bite.

“And the kid,” Rhodes said, as soon as May was gone.

All the air in Tony’s lungs seemed to vanished in one exhale. His face cracked a little; enough to make Harley worried that he’d crumble in front of his eyes. “He died in my arms. And he—he wanted me to save him. And I _couldn’t._ And _he apologised_.”

“What for?” Pepper asked, sitting on Tony’s other side.

Tony shook his head. “For making me watch, I suppose.”

 

-

 

The glowing woman was called Carol Danvers, who Thor had picked up on the way back to Earth, and she took one look at Harley, sitting at the kitchen island and forcing himself to eat something, and said, “The war is not over yet.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Harley replied. “The first battle’s loss was big enough that it might as well be.”

Carol had tilted her head then. She looked wholly human, wearing Pepper’s clothes and standing in the middle of the kitchen, but she had an otherness to her that came with having glowed the whole way to Earth, and having pushed a spaceship across the universe with a literal god.

“Don’t grow up too fast,” she told him. “At least, if you take on the responsibility of an adult, maintain some youthful optimism.”

Harley had nothing _but_ responsibility on his shoulders. For Abbie and Mama and himself. For the house and his homework and the cows in Miss Margaret’s field. For the Mustang and Rose Hill and Tony. He hadn’t seen any of that youthful optimism since Tony came rolling into Rose Hill, and maybe it was gone even before then.

Carol swiped one of his sandwiches before she left, stuffing it in her mouth as she vanished down a hall.

 

-

 

Despite having found Tony, Harley was still out of place in the facility. He was a kid; he was seventeen and he couldn’t help with the fighting and he certainly couldn’t figure out how to revert the satellite back to normal, and so it stayed, searching deep space for god-knows-what, because Tony had bigger things to put his efforts towards. (And Eastern Europe’s StarkPhones sat in a dark spot, as half of Eastern Europe’s population vanished into dust.)

He couldn’t do much at all, really. He was just there as another mouth to feed, and a body stacked with questions that he _had to ask_ because _Thor, seriously, how did you lose your eye?_ And _actually, you know, I think I prefer the eyepatch look on you._

So, the days dragged out, and May kept cooking and he kept eating and the Avengers kept trying to live up to their name.

The world was overjoyed to hear that Tony Stark was home, and yet it just opened up more questions: what were the Avengers going to do? They’d already failed in saving the universe – was avenging it all they really had left?

“You humans ask a lot of questions,” Nebula said, rolling her eyes, when she appeared in the workshop Tony had said Harley could run wild in. It was half the size of Tony’s, and clearly originally meant for Peter, seeing as the Spiderman logo was painted on the wall, and pods lined the far wall, ready to hold renditions of the suit. It felt unfinished, like Tony had been working on it, but he’d led Harley in and told him to make use of it, if he wanted, before leaving and going back to the real work again.

“We do,” Harley agreed. “Wait, what’s the context?”

Nebula was always slinking around the facility, not having a place as much as Harley didn’t have a place. The racoon, at least, had made friends with Thor, but Nebula’s only relationship was with Tony, and he was busy trying to save the world that was already lost.

“Thor called it _paparazzi._ They’re asking Stark questions. Lots of them.”

“Well there’s lots that needs answering,” Harley said. “And the only person who might possibly have the answers is Tony.”

“But he doesn’t.”

“No,” Harley said, kicking a wheely chair in her direction. “He doesn’t. But he’s gonna go up there and try to answer them anyway.”

Nebula eyed the chair before sitting in it. She rolled it slowly to his work desk, before dancing her fingers across his tool kit and picking out a small screwdriver. Then she pulled her feet up onto the chair, rested one arm across them, and got to work, tinkering with her body.

“Can I ask you a question?” Harley said, turning back to the screen. He had a live feed from the satellite, still probing space, and he watched it, sometimes, getting little static feedback every now and again. He’d tuned into a frequency he’d read about once; a blind scientist had learned how to listen to space, rather than look at it. Space sounded a lot like the television did before it found the right wavelength.

“See? I told you.”

He tilted his head to the side. The static washed across Peter’s room. “Do you think I’m filled with youthful optimism?”

“No,” Nebula replied at once. “But I don’t even know your name, so who am I to say?”

He huffed. “Harley. Do you think Thor looks better with the eyepatch than that fake eye he was wearing a few days back?”

“Undoubtedly,” she agreed. A compartment on her arm flicked open.

“Are you a cyborg?”

“I’m unsure of the definition of that word.”

“Human with mechanical enhancements.”

“I’m not human.”

“ _Alien_ with mechanical enhancements.”

“Then, yes, I am.”

Harley peered at the circuitry in her arm. “You need a smaller screwdriver.”

“No, I don’t—” She moved to use the one in her hand, then paused. Harley produced one from the toolkit and she took it, wordless. Harley watched her tinker for a while, considering the advancements in technology that could come from studying the way aliens made people like Nebula. “You are not filled with youthful optimism,” she told him at last, breaking the static-filled silence. “You are filled with youthful curiosity.”

“I am?”

“Yes. And it’s a dangerous thing, but also worth holding onto. Optimism is often naïve, _Harley_ , curiosity is how we uncover the universe’s mysteries. No one needs your optimism right now, they need your curiosity.”

He blinked at her and Nebula finally looked away from her arm, to see him for the first time. “You want to help save the universe,” she said.

“You don’t?”

“I want to kill the man that razed it. But you want to _help._ ”

“Yes.”

“Go be curious,” she said. “Ask people the questions no one is asking them, but they’re desperate to give the answers for. Go ask the remainder of the universe a few questions and see if it’ll cough up a response.”

 

-

 

He started with May Parker.

She was in the kitchen, coughing and waving at smoke with her oven mitts as the plume of grey curled closer and closer towards the fire alarm.

“None of these windows open,” she groused, spotting Harley and flicking on the fan above the oven. “Take this and stand on the table, would you?”

Harley did as he was told, grabbing the outstretched tea towel and climbing up onto the table top, fanning the smoke away from the fire alarm. Together, they wafted the smoke away, asking FRIDAY to turn on the AC to ventilate the room, and despite everything smelling like smoke, they could see properly again.

May frowned at the charring on the baking tray. “I was trying to make cookies.”

“Have you ever made cookies before?” Harley asked as he jumped down from the table.

“Yes.” The answer was almost petulant. “But this oven doesn’t get me. And the timer didn’t go off. And there aren’t any windows in the godforsaken kitchen that actually _open,_ like, what kind of design flaw is that? It’s all well and good to have pretty floor-to-ceiling windows to look out on the whole lot of _nothing_ that’s outside, but at least have one that _opens._ ”

May huffed, dumping the baking tray in the sink and turning the cold tap on. She squeezed washing up liquid over the rubble and let it all froth together, while Harley slipped onto a stool and tried to ignore the smoke smell.

“This is how most of my dinners go, too,” he said, watching May stare into the sink. “I mean, I started making dinner for Abbie when I was twelve, but I wasn’t any good. I’m still not, really – I just cook pizza in the oven and hope I don’t burn down the house if I want to do vegetables, too.” Harley pressed his knuckles into the palm of the opposite hand. “Mama can’t cook to save her life, either, which is funny ‘cause she works in a diner.”

May glanced over, switching off the tap and studying him with a furrow between her brows. Harley realises too late that he used present tense for someone who’s very much gone.

“Peter can’t cook,” she said after a few moments. “He tried once or twice, but he’s about as good a cook as I am, and well…” She gestured to the sink. “We usually go out for Thai when I ruin dinner. We have this thing, where, you know larb?” Harley didn’t, but he nodded. May choked out a smile. “I hold up some larb and say _I larb you._ ”

Harley smiled, swallowing. _Be curious._ He could be curious about engines and superheroes and space all livelong day, but there were people with answers, waiting to be questioned. “What’s Peter like?”

May smiled, and when she did Harley knew he’d said the right words; that she wanted to talk about him, celebrate his existence. “Oh, you would love him. Everyone does, it’s just a knack. He’s the kindest person I’ve ever known – always wants to do things for others, always wants to help. And if he can’t, well he takes them on himself, you know? He shoulders the blame whether he could’ve stopped it or not—like his Uncle Ben, my husband. He was shot a few years ago in a bodega robbery, and Peter carried that guilt, you know? Not saving him? But he is… he _was_ , just the brightest spirit I’ve ever seen. So smart and funny, and a hero, too—”

Harley propped up his chin on his hand as May continued, rambling and smiling and letting the words pour out as she told him about Academic Decathlon and his friends and how she taught him to dance for his first school dance. He heard about Peter’s loves and interests and how he’d always wanted to be an astronaut, but probably not like this, and how Iron Man was always his favourite of the Avengers, and he’d _begged_ to go to the Stark Expo, that year the drones attacked.

And Harley got to thinking about space, got to thinking about the drones and then New York and that wormhole; the tesseract being an infinity stone, and how the universe was pulling them all in such strange directions, leading them all to each other, to this moment in a kitchen in Upstate New York, where everything smelt of smoke and May Parker tried not to cry as she told Harley Keener everything there was to know about Peter Parker.

Afterwards, she wrapped her arms around Harley’s shoulders and pressed a kiss into his temple. She was a nurse, May; and she felt like it, in spirit and soul. She nurtured, and May was missing someone to look after.

He wanted to promise her that they’d get Peter back, but after already assuring her that he’d be on the ship, he decided to stay quiet. Besides, if there was a way to get the lost back, they would surely know about it by now, right?

 

-

 

“So, there may be a way to get the lost back,” Carol said in an Avengers meeting that Harley sat in on because they let him know state secrets, now. (He’d met Thaddeus Ross – unpleasant man, unpleasant experience – and apparently the seventeen year old ward of Miss Pepper Potts _shouldn’t_ know state secrets, but no one had ever asked him to leave a meeting, and so he kept memorising the words in the files that they were given, and someday maybe he’d trade those secrets for his college tuition money on the black market. Simply thinking ahead, was all.)

“I’ve been back a week and you’re only bringing this up now?” Tony raised a pointed eyebrow as they sat around the conference room table. Usually they did this sort of thing in armchairs; this felt particularly professional, considering Harley was wearing his old Space Invaders t-shirt and socks with a Thor’s hammer pattern (and wearing a mood ring and Dora the Explorer watch, couldn’t forget that).

“Well, I wasn’t sure until now. But, I am. Sort of. Ninety-five percent,” Carol decided. “Consider this: _they’re not actually gone._ ”

“What?” Steve asked.

“Exactly!” Carol smiled, pointing her finger upwards. “What if they’re not gone? Or, well, they _are_ , but just not in the way we know _gone_ to be.”

“I know you’re an alien and all,” Tony said, mild, “but could you try speaking English?”

She pointed at him with a smile, “Not an alien, but okay. You all keep saying they’re dead, right? What if they’re just… on vacation.”

“On vacation. Carol—”

“I know what you’re going to say,” Carol agreed, interrupting Tony. “But hear me out. Their bodies are gone, sure, but what if _they_ aren’t.”

“You’re talking about their soul,” Bruce said, and now Carol pointed at him, nodding.

“Yes! Their _souls._ What makes them, them. Their personality, brains, spirits. Their souls. Where have we heard that word recently?”

There was a moment of quiet. “The soul stone,” Tony said.

Carol jumped out of her chair now, quite excited about the whole idea. “Got it in one! The soul stone. I’ve been doing some research, and what if they never died? What if their souls are actually in the soul stone? What if the way to get them back out is to take possession of the gauntlet.”

“Any one of us would die if we wielded that thing,” Steve pointed out.

“And that’s not an easy task considering the fact that Thanos has just _disappeared,_ ” Rhodes agreed.

“But it makes sense,” Bruce said aloud. “That you can’t just _kill_ that many beings at once, that their energy can’t just disappear like that. When we die, we turn _into_ something else. We’re burned and become a gas. We rot and become something else. With the dust, there wasn’t much place for their energy to go—”

“—Their energy went into the soul stone,” Tony sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Nothing can truly be created or destroyed. It always turns into something else.”

“So, if we run with this, what? What do we do?” Steve asked.

“That’s easy,” a new voice said, and everyone at the table turned to look at the door, where two figures stood. They were familiar but not; white blonde hair where there should’ve been red, no bow and arrow, no catsuit and black get-up. Black Widow had spoken, but now she stopped.

It was Hawkeye that said, “We find Thanos, and we rip that ugly ass glove right off his hand,” though, Harley thought, he didn’t look like Hawkeye anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the conversation with nebula is probably my favourite part of this whole fic? and the story of the blind scientist who listened to space is true!! and she's got a tedtalk i think


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> spiderman spiderman does whatever a doggy can

Trying to find Thanos was easier said than done.

So, time stretched out and the world tried to put the pieces back together that had been scattered in the titan’s wake. First the cars were towed away, returned to their owners or placed in lots, rows and rows of thousands of vehicles, their owners in the wind. Then shops shut down, and the welfare system had to pick up the pieces of the children, orphaned and needing new families, as both mass unemployment fought the mass open job roles in chain grocery stores and tall towers of buildings.

Schools were shut for weeks until they had enough teachers, and pets that were still alive were taken to shelters, too packed to cope with the sudden influx of animals that had been left alone. And Harley watched all this from the compound, where his soul had already been signed away to Pepper Potts, and he didn’t need to worry about foster care or employment or being alone and needing to fill the space.

The Avengers were quiet in the aftermath of the end of the world, but they were still there, and always moving, always thinking and talking and trying to unravel the questions into simpler ones that could be answered without travelling the universe first.

Steve always had a smile for Harley, though they didn’t speak much, and Rhodey always asked Harley how he was feeling, if he needed anything, if there was anything he could do. Scott came and went, but he was never anything less than upbeat and kind. It was Natasha who discovered him one day, starfished on the living room floor, and returned thirty minutes later with old widow bites and tech she wanted updated or copied from enemies she’d fought, and tasked Harley with doing it for her. And Clint who seemed angry and lost and lonely who wouldn’t look at him for a week, but when he finally did, told him that if he needed _anything, anything at all, you can come to me about it, okay?_

And there was Thor and Carol, practically gods in their own rights, always light and optimistic and answering his questions about the universe and alien planets. And Happy, who was content enough to know that Harley enjoyed Downton Abbey too, and if he wanted to watch it in the evenings, the two of them could do that in relative peace, without disruptions or conversations neither of them wanted to have. And Pepper who checked in on him and asked him what the colour of his mood ring meant, and made sure he had enough clothes and attention, and bought a stack of textbooks to leave on his workshop desk, because he couldn’t forget about school just because the apocalypse had arrived.

And Tony, who Harley had only ever been good for prompting panic attacks for, who talked to him and mussed up his hair and made sure Harley’s world was still spinning fine, even if it was cracked and dented and missing two people-shaped holes from the side.

And May, who still brought him lunch every day and insisted on making dinner for him, even if he wasn’t hungry, because she needed to look after someone, and he was the only one there who would let her.

Because – and this was something Harley couldn’t escape, no matter how he’d escaped the dangers of the rest of the world, split in two – no matter where he turned, Peter was always there. Or, not there. Prominently not there that it was almost as if he was still taking up the space.

Because the Rogue Avengers didn’t know Peter, but they knew what he’d left behind. And Rhodey was always murmuring to someone how Harley reminded him of Peter, and Happy was always commenting that _the other one didn’t like this show_ , and Pepper had seen Harley wear a t-shirt with a science pun on and stopped dead in her tracks, and Tony was always looking back to the photo of a boy with the biggest smile Harley had ever seen, and May was still looking after Harley; a muscle reflex she couldn’t shake.

And there, in Harley’s lab that wasn’t really his, was the spider on the wall, and the glass cases for the suits, and the station of beakers and formulas for web fluid, and Star Wars figurines and an AI that had to be programmed out of the room, because she was confused why Harley was there and not Peter.

And Harley’s family may have been following him like ghosts, but their absence was not a thing in itself. It was not a space that had to be walked around, a chunk of the room that was dedicated to their nonexistence in the universe. But Peter Parker – whoever this kid had been, _Spiderman_ – was still there in the fact that he wasn’t.

And the concept of getting him back was fresh in everyone’s minds, no matter how many weeks distanced themselves from that meeting with Carol.

It was clear as day to Harley Keener that the universe would never be in balance if Peter Parker wasn’t in it.

 

-

 

He’d had an idea and scrounged through years of files and data to find the readings he was looking for. They’d studied them meticulously once; they’d acted like a homing beacon on Earth, and Harley figured they would act the same across the universe.

The Stark satellite was still staring out into deep space, and Harley worked when he could on extending the range, on locating alien satellites he came across, and hacking them to search with him. Harley had never stared so far into a void; he doubted any human had – but it was all right there, stretching before him, endless.

 

-

 

They went into the city, which Harley had been dying to do since he left it.

At Stark Tower, he, Tony, Steve and Pepper climbed out of the car at the side of the road; the press immediately flocking the four of them. As Pepper and Steve stepped forward, to address the crowd, Tony turned to Harley, shielding him from the cameras and pressing a cold, metallic object into his hand.

“We’ll be at this all day,” Tony said, “so feel free to use the chauffer – he’s here for you – and be back here by four.”

Harley nodded as Tony moved his hand away, revealing a hot rod red watch. It had a smart screen, and Harley had no doubts in his mind that it connected to the StarkPhone Tony had insisted on him using one night when he was feeling a little better about the world and saw the old, busted Nokia that Harley toted around.

“It has a panic button on the side,” Tony added. “A break in case of emergency feature.”

“Am I gonna have to be that asshole with two watches?” Harley asked, attaching it to his wrist above his sister’s.

Tony, to his credit, cracked a smile. “Go have fun. Go sightseeing.”

“Don’t lose your mind in the meetings,” Harley said and climbed back into the car. For one moment, as Tony shut the door behind him, he heard the questions about his being there – about the boy on the balcony from a month before, and who he could possibly be, but then they were muffled by the door, and Harley was alone with the chauffer.

He'd never been to New York before. He had no idea where to go.

“Where to?” the chauffer asked. He was one of Tony and Pepper’s personal drivers, like Happy, but paid less.

“How far away is Queens?” Harley asked.

“About forty-five minutes with this traffic.”

Harley hummed, trying to recall something about Peter that might send them to a closer location. “Is Midtown in Queens?”

“Midtown’s in Manhattan.”

Harley paused. “Are _we_ in Manhattan?”

The driver smiled, glancing over his shoulder. “We sure are, kid.”

“Let’s go there then.”

They kept up polite conversation throughout the drive, because Harley didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts, and it felt rude to just ignore the driver, so he asked questions about New York and got the answers he was after. What was that place? Where does that road go? Is a bodega a convenience store? Is New York pizza actually good, and can that be an answerable question when each individual pizzeria would be different, despite all sharing the same location?

Eventually, the driver said, “This is Midtown, got anywhere in mind?”, and Harley sighed, looking out the window.

“Midtown High,” he replied.

“You want to go to _school_?”

“Yeah, why not. I’m interested.”

“Interested?”

“Curious,” Harley corrected, and that seemed like the right word, because the driver nodded and steered them towards a school much larger and fancier than anything Harley had seen near Rose Hill, with the sign out front covered up with the words _MIDTOWN EMERGENCY SHELTER._

The driver pulled into the car park, and Harley hesitated before getting out. “You’re gonna wait here, right?”

“It’s literally my job, kid.”

Harley nodded and stepped out, looking around the cramped car park. There were a few people meandering around, and Harley followed them up the main steps to the front door, where a table sat, two students sitting with clipboards and bottles of water.

Harley slowed to watch the people ahead of him sign in. They were each handed a bottle and gestured to head inside. Then, the students turned to him.

“Welcome to the Midtown Emergency Shelter,” the blonde one said. She was sat up next to a slouching brown-skinned boy.

“It’s been a month,” Harley said, looking at the poster on the door that gave directions towards the cafeteria and gym. “There are still emergency shelters?”

“Where have you been living?” the boy shot. “Under a rock? _Of course_ there are still emergency shelters. Houses are burning down left and right with most of the fire department out of commission.”

“And,” the girl added, her tone more informative and polite than the hostility of the guy, “many people have been left homeless after The Snap.” The news had taken to calling Thanos’ genocide that after Steve had reference him snapping his fingers at a press conference. Harley didn’t know it had been taken up by everyone else, too. “Until the school is up and running again, we’ll continue to function as a shelter. We run off local donations, though. Turns out bottled water in the end times isn’t cheap.”

Harley nodded once, slow, and the girl narrowed her eyes a little, as if weighing him up. She then said, “You don’t have to be in need to go inside.”

“What?”

“Sign your name so we know you’re in there and take a look around. If you want to help out or volunteer, we need all the hands we can get.”

Harley looked at the clipboard, at the stacked pages that kept piling up; names and phone numbers listed one after another. (Absently, he thought about Eastern Europe, every StarkPhone user with no way of contacting anyone else because of him.)

“Did you know someone who went to school here?” the girl asked. Harley stepped forward to the table and caught sight of her name badge: _Betty._

“Uh. Almost,” he replied. “Kind of. He… I know his family.”

“Maybe we’d know him,” Betty said, chipper. “We can tell you if he’s here.”

Harley signed his name on the sheet, then rubbed at the back of his neck as he dropped the pen on the table. “He won’t be.”

“Oh.” She nodded, her smile fading. “Maybe we knew him.”

Harley nodded, his eyes darting around. The boy – _Flash,_ his nametag read – was hardly paying attention.

“Uh, Peter Parker,” Harley said.

Recognition flashed in both of their eyes. The boy sat up.

“You know Peter?” Betty asked.

“Like I said, almost,” Harley replied. “I’m close with his aunt. The rest of his family.”

“We figured he was dust,” Flash said, less hostile than before, but still bitter. “He disappeared during the ride to a field trip—which is weird, like, how did he get off the school bus? But, uh. Sucks, I guess, to be right.”

Betty nodded, then said, “His friends are inside, if you want to meet them. Ned and MJ – they’re working in the gym, I think. That’s where all the bunks are, and the games for kids and stuff.”

“Oh, right.”

Betty nodded, her eyes darting down to the sheet he’d signed. “Well, have a good day, Harley. As good as you can.”

Harley swallowed and went inside.

 

-

 

The gym was filled with rows of camp beds, the bleachers pushed back against the walls and an area sectioned off at one end, filled with toys and chairs and—dogs?

Harley raised his eyebrows at the sight; the fencing was clearly makeshift but provided a small area for the three dogs to walk around. There were a few food and water dishes inside, a ball or two and blankets to make beds in the corner. Harley leaned over the side, the closest dog standing and panting at the sight of a visitor. They were a small brown and white Jack Russel Terrier, as far as he could tell, and they butted their head into his outstretched hand without hesitation.

“He’s friendly,” a voice said next to him. “He loves strangers.”

Harley scratched behind the dog’s ear as he glanced up at the guy next to him. He had a mop of dark hair, brown skin, and wore a faded _Star Wars_ t-shirt of the original movie, oversized and hanging loose around him.

“What’s his name?”

“Spiderman.” Harley had to stop his laugh – _of course it was._ Because Peter’s absence was its own entity. “He’s a stray, so we named him. The other two are owned by people who’re staying here.”

Spiderman barked, licking Harley’s palm, before darting back off around the fenced area. Harley straightened, looking to the guy next to him.

“Big Spiderman fans around here?”

He nodded, and there was some sort of frown on his face. “Yeah, he’s uh—he’s like the school favourite. Saved the Academic Decathlon team in DC once. He’s… he’s our hero.”

Harley nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been hearing that a lot recently.”

“I’m Ned, by the way.”

Harley blinked. _No shit._ “Harley. Keener. The girl outside said you know Peter.”

Now it was Ned’s turn to look surprised. “You knew him, too?”

Harley looked back to the dog, Spiderman, now trying to engage a Doberman in a tug of war, unaware how poorly he was going to lose. “Sort of. I know May, though.”

“You do? Have you seen her recently? She’s gone to live with someone Upstate but I haven’t seen her, you know?”

“Yeah-yeah, I’m staying in the same place.”

Ned seemed to pause, and Harley weighed the situation. Either Ned knew about Peter being Spiderman or he didn’t. Either Ned knew that _someone Upstate_ was Tony Stark or he didn’t. Either Ned knew all these things and was wondering if Harley knew them too, or he wasn’t.

“How do _you_ know Tony Stark?” Ned decided, excitement alight in his eyes. _Or maybe not._

Harley cracked a smile. “Helped him out a few years back. I didn’t – uh – I didn’t have much place to go after the world kind of…” he mimed an explosion with his hands.

Ned nodded, “I’m staying with MJ’s folks – have you met MJ?” He pointed over his shoulder to a dark-skinned girl with a book in her hands. There were a few children sitting around her on the floor, and she seemed to be reading aloud to them. “My parents kind of…” he mimed the explosion, “too.” There was a pause. “Is May okay? With what happened to…?”

Harley shrugged, Spiderman running back over to where they stood. He scratched at the fence, and Harley leaned down, picking up the dog in his arms. He’d always been good with cows and chickens and the odd cat that was around town. He hadn’t had much time with dogs, but this one settled right in his arms, sniffing at his neck.

“She’s still alive, if that means anything at all,” Harley said. “She was pretty torn up when Peter didn’t walk out of… when he didn’t come back.”

Ned was quiet for a moment, reaching out a hand to scratch at Spiderman’s back, then he asked, “Are we sure he’s gone? Like—someone _saw_ him go? Because he could still be… How do we know?”

“Because he disintegrated in Tony’s arms,” Harley replied, and Ned’s hand stilled. “So, yeah, we know.”

 

-

 

He met MJ, met the kids, went outside after a little while and asked the driver if he wanted to come inside because this was where he was staying until they had to go back. The driver – Adam, because Harley finally asked his name – was handed a hot mug of coffee and he seemed pretty comfortable at the cafeteria tables, chatting with whoever wandered over. As Harley headed back to the gym, he unloaded the money in his pocket into the donation box when no one was looking; the money that Pepper had pressed into his hands, probably trying to work out how to be a good guardian in the brief moments between meetings and war planning. He'd felt strange about owning it and was glad that it was gone.

Harley then met Peter’s friends; his friends who very clearly knew about Spiderman, by the way, and they talked about the compound and the Avengers and Spiderman the dog, that Harley had pulled into his lap and didn’t want to let go of. He didn’t mention the possibility of getting people back – not when that was a hidden thing; a plan that was yet to come to fruition, and still toyed with the Avengers, out of their grasp.

But they were fun, and the apocalypse hadn’t wiped away their sense of humour; and seeing his mother fade hadn’t knocked out Ned’s optimism. They were still young, and hopeful, and Nebula would probably call them naïve, but they still embodied the _youthful optimism_ that Carol had wanted him to keep and Nebula said he’d never had.

When the clock started ticking past three, Adam found them on the floor in the gym.

“Time to go, kid,” he said. “We’ve gotta get back to the Tower by four.”

Harley nodded. Spiderman was on the floor, chewing on an old shoe. He reached out a hand, scratching at the dog’s back.

“You said he was a stray, right? Like, no owner?”

There was a pause, and Adam said, “You are _not_ making my car smell like dog.”

“It’s not really _your_ car.”

“Hey, I drive it, I have the authority here.”

Harley cocked a challenging eyebrow. “Pepper Potts is my legal guardian. She employs you. Doesn’t that give me the authority here?”

Adam and Harley stared at each other, then Adam huffed, looking to Ned. “Tell him he can’t have the dog.”

Ned glanced at MJ, who said, “Spiderman needs a good home.”

“What better home than the Avenger’s compound?” Ned asked.

Harley smiled, victorious.

 

-

 

Tony took one look at the dog on Harley’s lap, when he entered the car, and let out a deep sigh. “Where’d you get that?”

“Midtown High.”

“What’s its name?”

“ _His_ name is Spiderman.”

“Are you planning on changing the name?”

“Nope.”

Tony’s eye twitched and then he relaxed. “Alright then. But you’re cleaning up his shit.”

“I thought you said I was too talented to be cleaning up shit?”

 

-

 

Nebula was in his – Peter’s – lab when Harley finished dinner. Spiderman followed him into the room and jumped up onto Harley’s chair ahead of him.

Nebula, nearby, had her feet propped up on the desk, as she clicked part of her leg back into place. The desks were covered with designs and blue prints and models of widow bites and Clint’s most recent set of bow and arrows, despite his new shtick of a sword.

“What’s that?” she asked, nodding to Spiderman, who Harley picked up and placed on his lap, reclaiming his chair.

“A dog.”

“It looks like a rodent.”

Harley glanced over to her. “Don’t be mean to Spiderman.”

Nebula blinked twice, then rolled her eyes. “Humans are so sentimental.”

“Yeah, we are. Hey, do you want me to scan your eyeball now? You said it was twitching.”

Nebula huffed and rolled her chair over.

 

-

 

Harley got the notification in the middle of the night.

For once, he’d gone to bed on time, two days after his trip to New York. He’d filled up on dinner – May was slowly getting better – and hadn’t gone back to the lab afterwards, knowing he’d spend all night in there if he did. Spiderman was asleep in his dog bed at the foot of Harley’s human bed, and both of them woke up with FRIDAY’s voice.

“Harley, your scanners have found a match.”

He groaned, rolling over in bed. “Wha…?”

“Your scanners have found a match.”

“My scanners?”

“Your deep space scanners you hacked to feed back into the Stark satellite.”

Harley pushed himself up. “My scanners.”

“They have found a match.”

He yawned. Spiderman barked, annoyed at being woken up. “A match.”

“An energy signature match to the tesseract readings from 2012.”

“Oh. _Shit._ ”

Harley leapt out of bed then, grabbing the blanket from the chair and wrapping it around his shoulders like a cape. Spiderman was hot on his heels as he left his bedroom, the hall lights flicking onto a low light as he swept past them. They went off as soon as he was out of range.

They raced down to the lab, the red of the Spiderman symbol even brighter at two in the morning, the fluorescents already on and waiting; his screens lit and buzzing. There was that deep space static filling the room, the one he’d listened to for a month; hearing heavenly bodies rather than seeing them. Only, it was a little different tonight; a little more metallic.

On one of the monitors – he’d pulled them all to the main desk, so he wouldn’t have to move between stations – there were numbered coordinates for a place galaxies away, and on another the frequency of the sound was glitching over and over.

“Is the trace still happening?” Harley asked, and a screen flicked over to show that it had been more like a pulse. The scanners had caught it and it had vanished, the residual energy beaming all the way back to Earth. The time it would’ve taken meant that it probably happened days ago – but it was better than having no clue at all.

Still, he watched the glitch in the frequency, the pulse in the wavelength. It echoed outwards; rippling on water, through space and time, across the universe and back to his monitor. Unmistakable. Only one signature like it in the universe.

“Congratulations, Harley,” FRIDAY said from on high. “You have located the space stone.”

 

-

 

By breakfast, Peter’s lab was full of people.

Usually, they congregated in an office or a conference room; either Bruce’s or Tony’s lab – but today it was in here, with Spiderman yapping at their ankles and all the monitors in the room piled onto the desks that Harley had pushed together. No one looked directly at the spider symbol on the wall, but it did not go unnoticed.

Tony and Bruce were leaning over Harley’s desk, Carol and Thor pacing somewhere behind them. Rhodey was sat in the other chair while Natasha and Clint stood by Steve, talking quietly. Nebula was stood by the chair Harley sat in, her head tilted as the static played.

“It sounds different,” she agreed. “It sounds like an infinity stone.”

God, it was good to have validation.

Even better: to have validation in a room full of literal geniuses, warriors, war heroes and _gods._ Harley Keener, the most human of the lot, the youngest of the lot, the most inexperienced of the lot, had found Tony Stark _and_ Thanos.

Spiderman jumped onto his lap, panting. Yeah, his dog thought he did a good job, too.

“This is incredible,” Bruce said, looking to Harley. “I thought about tracking the signature but I didn’t think we could get a reach that would span so far.”

“How many networks are you using?” Tony asked, taking the mouse and scrolling through the itemised list of satellites and systems Harley had connected to over the past month.

“A little over a hundred,” Harley replied. “Some have massive ranges, though – this place, here, the _Ayesha_ , I think, theirs spans almost seventy times further than the Stark satellite could ever _dream_ of reaching.”

“No need to rub it in,” Tony murmured, but it wasn’t cold. “How did you connect to an alien satellite – what about the language difference?”

Harley shrugged. “Nebula’s been showing me the tech in her body – it’s decades ahead of anything we’re even working on. It’s outside the realms of science we _know;_ by human standards, she’s impossible. So I just—deconstructed it. As I was doing that, I realised the language centre of her brain was replaced with technology.”

“I can speak hundreds of languages fluently,” Nebula said. “Harley connected me to his machines and I translated the important parts.”

Harley rolled his eyes. “She missed a _lot_ of words out because she thought they weren’t relevant.”

“They were not.”

“They absolutely were, but it’s fine, I forgive you.”

Spiderman barked in his lap. Nebula rolled her cybernetic eyes. Tony shook his head, a smile wide on his face.

“This is incredible, kid.”

Harley looked back to the monitors and nodded. “We can’t get an immediate read because of the distance – but if we get another reading in a similar location, then he might be staying a while.”

“What made you even think to do all this?”

Harley paused, eyes on the frequency wavelength. “I don’t know. Just curious, I guess.”

He didn’t need to see the smirk on Nebula’s face to know it was there.

 

-

 

When Harley finally got back to bed, before lunchtime, he wondered for the first time who would possibly wield the gauntlet. Who could even cope with that kind of power?

Someone would have to do it to bring everyone back. Someone would have to withstand the strongest forces in the universe if the world was going to reshape itself.

Could anyone manage it? Or was it only Thanos who could even dream of such a thing?

 

-

 

Three days later, he got another reading at the same location.

The team suited up; the space ship Nebula and Tony had arrived in refurbished and fixed up. It would still be a long trip across the universe, even with the jumps that Rocket had sworn the ship could do, and the possibility of Carol and Thor pushing it to up the speed. There was a lot of unknowns, too; like whether Thanos was alone, or with more of his ‘children’; like what planet it was specifically and the terrain they would find there; like if they would even succeed.

“We have to,” Tony said, when Harley voiced this concern. “If we don’t, then no one will. Then this is how life will be from now on, and Earth will be defenceless and Peter—” Tony shook his head. “We’re going to win. We’re going to bring everyone back, and when we do, the entire universe will know not to fuck with this planet again.” Harley nodded, stiff, and Tony’s hand landed on his shoulder. “You’re going to love Peter,” he said.

“So, I’ve heard.”

“He—he’s like a son to me. He’s all the good I want the next generation to have. He’s all the good of me. And I didn’t even raise him—but I’m not going to do a better job with a kid than I can with him.”

“Get him back, Tony.”

Tony’s jaw was tense, and Harley watched it work. “I plan to.”

 

-

 

They installed a feed to the satellite into the ship. Because of the extended range, it was likely the only way the Avengers would be able to communicate with Earth again – but still, the messages would take time to go through.

The day they planned to leave, they held a press conference.

The Avengers were sat at a table, lined with microphones. They looked confident and cool, despite their plan.

Harley watched from the back of the room, with May and Happy, as Tony explained the situation in the simplest of terms. They had an idea where Thanos might be. They were going to travel through space to reach him. They were going to kill him, and, if they could, they were going to bring everyone back.

The room had exploded with noise at that, but Tony had calmed them with a wave of his hand. “There is no certainty here. I cannot promise you that those that we lost will come back, so I won’t. I’m saying there’s a chance – and that chance is one that we’re willing to bet on.”

When they took questions, their answers were precise, succinct. Yes, they might not make it back. No, there were no Avengers remaining on Earth. Yes, they trusted that their intelligence on Thanos’ location was correct.

“How can you be sure?” someone asked.

“Because there are almost two hundred satellites across the universe that are connected to mine,” Tony replied. “And that total is going up daily. Those satellites have given us the readings we need to be able to locate Thanos—”

“How did you connect to other satellites?”

“Well, I didn’t,” Tony replied. “While I’ve been busy building new suits of armour to stand a chance against a titan, the last kid alive from Rose Hill, Tennessee figured out how to find Thanos.” Harley swallowed at the back of the room, Tony’s eyes finding his. “There is no human alive who has seen as much of the universe as Harley has in this moment. There is no person – not myself, not Banner, not anyone standing up here today – who thought to create such a web of scanners, across all reachable alien civilisations, and use it to save the world.”

“Who is Harley?” someone called.

Tony waved a hand, his gaze meandering back across the crowd. Harley’s heart was thumping hard inside his chest, hitting straight through the ribs and banging on the skin to be let out. “He’s that kid that someone got footage of on the Stark Tower balcony about a month back,” Tony replied. “And he’s one of the smartest kids I’ve ever met. One of the smartest _people._ I think everyone up here would agree.”

Two seats down, Pepper Potts nodded. “When Tony was stuck in space, Harley found him. I won’t forget that.”

Steve leaned towards his microphone, which felt strange, because Harley and Steve barely ever spoke. “He’s not just some kid from Rose Hill. I’m sure I speak for everyone at this table when I say that Harley has a place on this team. He came through for us all when we didn’t even ask it of him.”

“It’s because of him that we have this chance,” Tony said. “And we’re not going to waste it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is the longest chapter of this fic (5k) and i cut so much out of it. like the press conference scene went on for another 700 or so words that was literally just the avengers expressing their love and admiration for harley keener and it was total fan service (the fan being me) but then i realised it was entirely too much  
> but i definitely wanted something after tony saying 'he's like a son to me' about peter to still show how much he loves and care for harley  
> okokokok one more chapter left  
> in an ideal world i'll post it tomorrow, but consider i'm only 1k in rn that's less likely than we want it to be  
> we'll see!!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the avengers leave earth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i truly, truly believed there'd only be five chapters. but i'm the worst. so. there's six. we're not done yet, lads.

The end of the press conference involved revealing a suit called the Rescue armour, that Tony had made for Pepper. Harley wasn’t sure how he felt about Pepper going into space too; she was a stable figure in his life right now, she was his legal guardian and he hadn’t even known her to express an interest in fighting like the Avengers.

But she said, “If there is one thing I have learned, it’s that if you have the ability to help, you also have the responsibility to.” It rang true in Harley’s head, and when Tony sent a glance to the Spiderman emblem on the wall behind them (sitting with the other fallen heroes’ symbols; Black Panther, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Doctor Strange, the Guardians, even Bucky Barnes), Harley guessed where it came from.

Then, only a few hours later, the ship was warming up and the Avengers were taking their last looks at Earth’s sky, as brilliantly blue as it had ever been.

Pepper, her Rescue armour purple and shining, placed a hand between Harley’s shoulder blades. “Look after the compound,” she said, her helmet retracted around her neck. She looked wistful as she stared at the facility she’d called her home.

“I will.”

“And May,” Pepper replied. “Look after her, too. And Happy – he doesn’t like to admit that he cares, but he does, and I think he likes having someone to look after.” Harley nodded, his mouth dry over the possibilities of what she was saying. The compound would be so empty until they returned – _if_ they returned. And if they did, who was to say that Pepper would be among them? Or Tony? Or anyone who would remember that Harley’s brave face was a sham and that he’d never been more scared beneath it all?

He didn’t want to make this about himself, but what _about_ him? If the Avengers never came back, where would he go? Straight into foster care?

“I’ve left a tablet in your lab,” Pepper said, and referring to Peter’s lab as his settled strangely on his shoulders. “It has override codes and things like that. Safety procedures. Try and memorise your personal override number. And ask FRIDAY if you need any help. Happy’s the highest ranking person here, but he’s got SI duties as well—so if anyone asks you for anything—”

“It’s going to be okay,” Harley interrupted. Pepper’s words had slowly become tinged with worry as she’d carried on, and he didn’t like hearing her like that.

She nodded, firm. “I need you to listen to this part, okay? It’s important. If we’re not back in six months time—”

“Pepper—”

“ _Listen._ If we’re not back, then the lawyers are going to come around. This was Tony’s decision as much as it was mine, okay? Neither of us—we don’t have any family that could take SI from us. There are no heirs to the Stark fortune, but you saved Tony, and you gave the Avengers a fighting chance—”

“Pepper.”

“—If you don’t want it, that’s fine. Don’t take the company. But hold onto it until you’re twenty-one and then announce a change in owner, okay?”

“I can’t run a _company_ —”

“You can do anything you put your mind to,” Pepper shot back. “But don’t worry about that, okay? That’s in six months. That’s only if Tony and I don’t come back. If one of us does, then the lawyers won’t ever arrive. You’ll be fine.”

Harley nodded, his worldview crashing and burning in the back of his mind. He couldn’t picture a world where he ran Stark Industries, where he had a company and a facility and the world at his fingertips. The Stark Fortune. He was a kid from Rose Hill, population him and six cows.

Pepper pulled him into an embrace, and it felt like her but not, with the armour. He hugged her back anyway.

“We’ll come back,” she promised him. “I just had to prepare in case we didn’t.”

“But you will.”

“But we will.”

 

-

 

Nebula appeared by his side when she hadn’t been there previously. She did it silently; one minute not there, the next second speaking as if she’d been there all along.

“You would do well, in charge of all this.”

He frowned at her. “Were you eavesdropping?”

A petulant response: “Yes. But my ears are cybernetically advanced, it’s hard not to.” Her eyes were fully black, too, and she turned her head to look at him. “I will see you after the battle or in the pits of hell. Whichever comes first.”

Harley snorted. “Good luck. Don’t miss.”

“I have only ever taken killing shots,” Nebula replied.

She raised a hand, like she was going to pat his shoulder, but then dropped it, her limbs quietly whirring. “Always aim for the head,” she told him.

“I thought your advice was to be curious.”

“It is. But after you have been curious and found what you are looking for, there might be those that wish to take it from you. That is when you aim for the head.” It sounded like a goodbye.

“I’ll see you after the battle,” Harley said.

She looked at him like she expected to see him in the pits of hell.

“Take this,” Harley decided, split-second. She blinked at him as he pulled Abbie’s mood ring off and held it out for her. She just stared at it.

“Your colour ring.”

Harley rolled his eyes, taking her hand and slipping it onto her finger. “It’s a mood ring. The colours change depending on how you’re feeling.”

“Why would you possibly need one of those?”

“It’s not a _need_ , it’s a _want,_ ” Harley replied with a shrug. “Anyway, I expect you to return that to me after Thanos.”

Nebula studied him for a moment, and though her eyes were pools of black, he knew she understood him. She looked at the ring. “It’s black.”

“I think that means excited.”

“How can it tell? It’s on my prosthetic hand.”

Harley shrugged. “I didn’t say it’s a _working_ mood ring.”

 

-

 

Tony pressed his hands into Harley’s shoulders, his face clouded in a storm of worry. “Look after—”

“The compound,” Harley interrupted, rolling his eyes. “And May, Happy, and the company if need be.”

Tony blinked. “I was going to say look after _yourself._ And that yappy little dog of yours. I sent you some cash this morning, so you don’t have to worry about anything. I just want you to keep yourself safe, okay? And keep an eye on the skies for us. Let us know if anything happens while we’re gone.”

“It’ll take a few days for anything to reach you.”

“That’s fine,” Tony said. “But I’d feel better knowing if Earth is invaded or they discontinue Toblerones or something while we’re gone. Rather that than coming back and finding the world in ruins and triangle-themed protests everywhere.”

Harley cracked a smile, letting Tony pull him in for a hug.

If you’d told Harley five years before that he’d be standing in front of a space ship, bidding a goodbye to the Avengers before they shot off into space to save the universe, he wouldn’t have believed you. He wouldn’t have believed that he’d be feeling something similar to the day his mother and sister dusted, either; that his family is slowly, carefully, systematically pulling itself apart.

Tony placed a hand in Harley’s hair to ruffle it, and then he was gone, climbing into a space ship. As the bay door shut, Harley saw Steve stare back out at him, saw Thor turn marginally and Carol say something beneath the growl of the engine.

Spiderman barked at his feet, running in circles, as May and Happy joined him on the green. The final government employees of the facility stood further back, too, as Harley picked up his dog and watched the ship launch into space.

He watched his family go with it.

 

-

 

_“It has been one month since the Avengers departed Earth to face Thanos, and they have yet to return. Cities of the world are in the midst of rebuilding since “The Snap” that occurred two and a half months ago. Highways are running smoothly one again, new elected bodies are taking their places in governments across the world, and most of the schools in America have started up again._

_“There has been no word from Stark Industries, officials from the Avengers facility or Thaddeus Ross, on the future of any of those enterprises.”_

Harley rolled his neck, watching as the news anchor turned to the business expert that was seated beside them. Somewhere behind him, May was finishing up dinner, and his school textbooks were open on the sofa. Though schools were up and running again, Harley didn’t like the idea of starting over in Upstate New York and chose instead to hire a private tutor for home school with Tony’s money – at least until things got back to normal.

“Harley, Spiderman crapped on the floor again!” May called. “Come clean this up!”

Harley groaned, climbing off the sofa and sending a glare towards Spiderman, who was determinedly licking his own ass.

May levelled him with a stare, throwing a cloth his way and pointing to the disposable bags on the counter. “Spiderman needs to learn to go outside.”

“You think I’m not teaching him? I’m trying but he’s a bad student.”

“Maybe you should take him to one of those training classes,” May replied as Harley knelt down to clean up the shit. She waved a rag in the air, keeping a careful eye on her cooking. “He does tricks fine, but I read online that he needs to respect you.”

“Spiderman respects no one,” Harley replied, pulling a face. “He shits in the face of the man and then licks his own butt.”

“Language,” May said, though she smothered a laugh as she did. When Harley was finished cleaning up (and sitting in front of Spiderman, holding his face between his hands and saying, very slowly, as if it would help the language barrier, _Stop. Shitting. In. The. Kitchen. You. Heathen._ ), May glanced up towards the ceiling. “FRIDAY, can you tell Happy that dinner will be on the table in five?”

There was a pause, before FRIDAY responded, “He hopes its chicken.”

May fluttered her rag with a smile. “Well guess what I have made.”

“By the context of the conversation, I would have to guess chicken,” FRIDAY replied.

“Wrong. It’s beef. If he’s late, I’m feeding his dinner to the dog.”

Harley set the table upon May’s command, and Happy came in just as she finished serving up, thanking her for the beef despite it not being chicken. They ate in relative silence, the news playing across the room, and Spiderman preferring to knock his food onto the floor before eating it (Harley, knowing this, created a second floor made of newspaper that now spanned the majority of the kitchen-diner, so Spiderman could create art with his floor food before eating it).

On screen, the anchor talked about a decrease in crime rates since The Snap. The three kept eating, and the Avengers didn’t come home.

 

-

 

“What’s your puppy’s name?” a girl asked at the park. She was maybe eight or nine, but painstakingly reminded Harley of his little sister. She was crouched down, petting his dog and laughing as he kept trying to lick her.

“Spiderman,” Harley said, crouching down to her height. Spiderman barked, and placed his front two paws on the girl’s knees.

“Like the superhero?”

“Just like the superhero, yeah.”

The girl frowned before giggling at Spiderman’s panting. She scratched behind his ear with a grin on her face. “Daddy said Spiderman went up into space and didn’t come back.”

“That’s what I heard, too.”

A moment later, her parents called her over and she said goodbye to the dog and then Harley, before running off towards them. Harley stayed crouched, watching her go, as Spiderman barked.

“Yeah, I know you’re not in space,” he said. “You wouldn’t like it up there. No parks. No squirrels. None of May’s shoes for you to chew up.”

“You know they say it’s a sign of insanity to talk to yourself.”

Harley looked up, watching MJ and Ned head over to him. The former had spoken, and her smile was knowing.

“My dog’s a good listener, actually.”

“Seems it,” MJ replied, bending down to greet Spiderman, who immediately jumped up in response.

They went to a café and bought overpriced coffee and sandwiches; Spiderman tangling himself up in his lead as he wove around the chair legs. They talked about Peter a little and school a lot; Midtown couldn’t be an emergency shelter anymore, so people were having to find somewhere else to go. There were thousands of homeless not being housed; buildings had burned down and entire hospitals were without staff. The wait for emergency surgeries was still a day long at minimum, and over half the police force was missing, and while the crime rates were down for the moment, those that were still looting and killing were getting caught less and less.

Harley tore off a small chunk of his sandwich and fed it to Spiderman under the table.

“Where did everyone from the shelter end up?”

“The streets, mostly,” MJ replied with a shrug. “There’s nowhere else for them to go.”

So, people were living on the streets and Harley was living in a luxuriously designed facility Upstate, with acres of land for Spiderman to run around and a permanently stocked fridge.

He stopped by Stark Tower after the café and went searching for Happy, who was currently in a board meeting as interim CEO. He had little to no training in that area, having been head of security and acquisitions for so long – but he was the one Tony and Pepper had trusted all the same.

Harley waited in Pepper’s office, that Happy would be using for the time being, and let Spiderman nap on the sofa while he searched for property in Manhattan. There was a lot of it on sale; the housing market was in an all-time low, and people were trying to get rid of their houses any way they could. And their community buildings, because no one could afford to keep them up and running anymore.

He’d just chosen one on the outskirts of Midtown when Happy came in.

“I thought you were out with your friends.”

“That was earlier. I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Happy moved around to Harley’s side of the desk. “Sick of the compound already?”

“The emergency shelters in schools had to shut down now school’s up and running. People are being left on the street.”

Happy placed down the folders in his hands and leant over the desk to read the screen. “Are you wanting SI to pay for this idea of yours?”

Harley shrugged. “It might actually come under the Maria Stark Relief Foundation,” he replied. “If not, Tony left me more than enough to cover this and its upkeep.”

“Tony left you that so you wouldn’t starve to death.”

“All the more reason for the Relief Foundation to take it on.”

Happy and Harley met eyes for a moment, before Happy nodded. “Sure thing.”

“Really?”

“I’m CEO now. I get to make the decisions.” He grabbed the phone on Pepper’s desk. Harley was hit for a moment with the absence of her. It was different in the way Peter was gone, but here was Happy, using her room just like Harley used Peter’s. “I’ll make some calls. Get out of my chair.”

Harley smiled, and he kept smiling all the way back to the compound, where he told May about the idea when she got home from work at an Upstate hospital. Still, the Avengers didn’t come home that day. The skies were as empty as ever.

 

-

 

_“The Maria Stark Relief Foundation has rented out buildings across New York City to house and feed those that are in need. Since the Avengers left Earth, a little over a month ago, Happy Hogan has been in place as interim CEO. This is his first act that the public has been made aware of, and he took a moment to speak about this decision today.”_

The screen showed Happy exiting Stark Tower. A few men in suits walked with him, some lawyers, at least one a bodyguard. He shot an annoyed look at the reporters but stopped to speak to them anyway.

_“There will be a full press briefing in the upcoming days about Stark Emergency Shelters,”_ Happy said on screen, _“but for now, the Relief Foundation has rented out buildings rather than buying them, in the hopes that this money can fund the work that already happens in these community buildings, and in the event that the Avengers do succeed in… you know, bringing people back, that the buildings can go back to the previous owners without much hassle. The Stark Shelters will be opened within the few days. Volunteers are welcome, but currently they’re being staffed by both previous employees of the buildings we’re renting, and the Relief Foundation workers.”_

_“Why has it taken this long?”_ a reporter asked. _“Is this your first act as CEO?”_ another called.

Happy, still making his way through the crowd and to the car, waiting on the curb, glanced over his shoulder. _“This was actually the kid’s idea, but I realised when he brought it up how necessary it was. It’s not my first act as interim CEO, but I believe it’s the most important one I’ll make throughout my time in this role. Now bugger off, no more questions._ ”

Happy took to the language of a CEO like a fish to water. The Stark Shelters were packed from the opening day. Still, the Avengers didn’t come home.

 

-

 

Months passed with no word, with no return of those who were gone, without the Avengers coming home.

 

-

 

“Can you see them?” May asked, sitting in one of Harley’s desk chairs beside him in Peter’s lab. Harley pulled a face.

“Sort of. The signal’s weak – it always has been – but the ship is about here…” He brought up a map of all the satellites he’d connected to – somewhere in the range of three hundred, now it was slower going without Nebula’s ability to translate the alien languages – and circled his finger somewhere in another galaxy, far off from the Milky Way.

“That’s far.”

“It’s a fast ship,” Harley replied. “And it’s been in this area for a few weeks, I think.”

“That’s the same area as the space stone signal, right?”

Harley nodded. The frequency he latched onto from the space stone hadn’t moved away from that area – but it still wasn’t a small location to comb. There must’ve been a good few planets at those coordinates, in another galaxy entirely.

And galaxies were _huge._ Each one could contain up to a trillion stars – and each of those stars could have their own solar system. Harley had worked a few miracles, finding the right area in the first place, but the area was large, and it seemed the Avengers were still searching through it.

He’d received only a few messages from them since they left; and none of them had mentioned successfully finding Thanos and the gauntlet. It had been three months since they left, and the Avengers weren’t home yet.

 

-

 

Harley kept in contact with the few people left in Rose Hill. Josh, Crazy Dan by the gas station’s brother, most of all. But Philip was still alive, and a woman named Sarah who worked at the dive bar. They had collected all the animals in the town that were left, and placed them on Mr Reynold’s farm, where they looked after them at the end of the world.

Occasionally, Josh would phone and ask if Harley knew how to fix something that was broken, or jump start a car, and Harley would talk him through it from across the country, because the world was in shambles but Harley Keener was still the only person from Rose Hill who could fix almost anything you put in front of him.

On his end of the phone, he fixed up the satellites and figured out how Peter’s webshooters worked and made a spare pair while he watched TV to keep his hands busy. He kept on with Nat’s widow bites, so she would have more when she came back, and Clint’s bow and arrow, so he could use them if he stopped being angsty and playing with swords.

And still, the Avengers didn’t come home.

 

-

 

He was in the Midtown Stark Emergency Shelter, drinking bad coffee while Ned and MJ played with the kids that were living there. It had been four months since the Avengers left, six since the universe split in two, and Harley’s signals from the satellite were now confusing and too far away to properly analyse. He could’ve sworn, in the last moments of clarity, before the Avengers’ signal devolved into pure static, that he’d seen other ships in the area.

Harley hated that he didn’t know what that meant. He hated that it was probably Thanos’ ‘children’, coming to slaughter whoever was still out there.

It had been four months and he was trying to avoid counting down the days until six months. Until he was handed something he wasn’t sure he wanted.

He could handle responsibility just fine; Harley was born with weights on his shoulders and it was the only way he knew how to live. He was a helper by nature, too, though people thought of him more as a smart ass than anything else. But Harley hadn’t been forced to help Tony when he steamrolled through Rose Hill – he’d wanted to. Just like he’d wanted to help Miss Margaret and Mr Reynolds and anyone with a busted DVD player and toaster. He’d wanted to help the Midtown shelter, and he’d wanted to help the homeless. He’d wanted to help the Avengers, the planet, everyone that was left.

And Harley knew that if he was good with both responsibility and helping, a company like SI in his hands wasn’t a bad thing.

But it wasn’t his. It wasn’t his to have. And he wasn’t sure he wanted to run a business when he could be building things, instead.

Spiderman barked at his feet and Harley picked him up. He’d been apart from the Avengers for longer than he’d been with them – was it wrong to still think of them as family? Of Pepper and Tony as the people who looked after him?

Of course, there was May and Happy, and Harley didn’t have any extended family biologically, but he thought of them as his aunt and uncle more by instinct than choice. May was still making sure he ate and Happy was still making sure he didn’t lose it, and Harley was reminding the both of them of the reckless geniuses that they’d been charged with before.

Harley sat down beside Ned, who automatically reached over and stroked at Spiderman’s fur.

“Weird to think that we’ll have to start planning for college soon,” Ned said. “It’s like, there are so many bigger things going on, you know?”

Harley knew. How was he supposed to think about college when the Avengers’ signal was blocked, and he couldn’t tell where they were anymore? When they could be dead, and he could be the last remaining heir to anything they once had?

(Harley had dreamt only a week before that he pulled on the Iron Man armour during another alien invasion, and became the new Iron Man. He’d somehow saved the day all by himself, but Harley had woken up confused and panicked and certainly not the world’s only defender.)

“I was thinking MIT,” Harley said. “I mean, I’ve always been thinking it, but that’s—”

“That’s my dream school,” Ned interrupted. “Maybe with half the potential applicants gone I finally have a shot.” The two of them paused and Ned pulled a face. “Was that in bad taste?” Harley snorted. “Is it too soon to be joking about it? I saw a meme on Twitter about that Queen song?”

“Which one?”

MJ looked up. “’Another One Bites the Dust’,” she said. “I saw it, too.”

Harley grimaced. “ _That’s_ in bad taste. But I get it, you know? If you can’t joke about it—”

“Exactly!” Ned nodded. Spiderman jumped down from Harley’s lap, and headbutted Ned’s knee. “It’s sad and it sucks but we can’t mourn forever, right? Like, it’s the worst tragedy to ever come to the world—”

“I think we’re all gonna feel guilty,” MJ said, the little girl sitting next to her entirely oblivious to the conversation. “I think we’re gonna move on and then remember and feel bad for moving on. The universe was literally split in two – but for us, it’s still going, you know? We’re still here. The world hasn’t stopped. It’s kept spinning and college applications still have to be written and sent out, and just because people are gone doesn’t mean that we can just stop.”

They were quiet for a moment, before Harley nodded. “I get it. We’ve got to keep going.” He thought about his Mama and sister, and how the first day they were gone Harley had hopped in a car and driven away. Even on day one of the apocalypse, Harley knew he couldn’t just sit in the sadness. He had to keep going.

And if Pepper and Tony and the Avengers didn’t come back, he’d keep going. He’d apply for MIT, he’d run a company, he’d try to do better in the world in whatever way he could. He’d fix things and he’d probably name a building or two after his lost family members; he’d probably fend off whatever guy came forward and claimed to be his father after all these years; he’d probably ask Happy and May to stand by his side at his wedding.

He had to keep moving forward, whether the universe had shuddered to a brief halt or not.

He got it, and it looked like Ned and MJ got it, too.

And that was the moment the old man materialised in the centre of the gaggle of children.

They screamed, darting away as air turned to dust turned to ash and then pieces of skin and existence, assembling themselves into the shape of an old man, face contorted in surprise and fear. He fell, when he was all put together again, letting out a shout amongst the screams of the children.

Harley opened his mouth but no words came out.

Then there was an old woman, on his left. And a middle-aged man somewhere behind him. A child, crying on the floor, coming together, bit by bit. Then the room doubled in population, person after person forming from dust mites; clothes sewing themselves back together, cracks in their skin gluing themselves shut and vanishing.

“Oh, my God,” Ned breathed, which was the only thing to say, really.

MJ helped the old man up and Harley stood, letting the old woman lean on him as Spiderman barked his protest to the room filling up.

“They’re back,” MJ said. She met his eyes. “They’re coming back.”

A whole universe, repopulating itself. Pieces forming one after another after another; the population of existence doubling in size all at once.

“Mom,” Ned said, suddenly, scrambling for his phone.

Harley lost his breath in a gasp. “Ma. Abbie.” The old woman stopped leaning on him as he grabbed his phone from his pocket, pulling it out and dialling for home. He picked up Spiderman as he went, pushing through the ruckus of the shelter, strangers appearing on all sides, people coming back to life where they had died, children crying for their parents in a room of new faces.

The phone rang all the way through and Harley dialled again. He made it out onto the street, past the Relief Foundation worker picking up a woman from the side of the road; the street was repopulating too. People growing back together in the middle of the road, where they vanished.

“Oh, my God.” Harley stared up at the sky, hanging up the phone that never rang through. People, falling. People who had vanished on planes _falling._ He pressed a button on the side of his phone.

“How can I help you?” FRIDAY’s voice asked.

“Dispatch the Iron Legion,” he ordered. “Now! There are people falling from the sky. You need to catch them—”

“The Iron Legion has been dispatched.”

Harley stumbled through the street in half a dazed run. The world was piecing itself back together but the edges were jagged and mismatched. There was someone in the street; having materialised right before the car entered their space and ran them down.

“Holy shit,” Harley breathed.

How many people would be brought back to life to immediately die again?

He dodged out of the way of floating ash, regrouping where he was standing a moment before. The sky filled with Iron Legion suits, catching and depositing as many people as possible on the ground. But not all of them. Harley tried to ignore the sickening crunch of a body hitting a car roof.

It was fucking chaos, but it all meant something very important: Thanos was dead, and someone had wielded the gauntlet. But he couldn’t think about that right now.

Harley spoke into his phone again. “When people stop appearing as quickly, I need the Legion to start transporting people to the nearest hospitals,” Harley ordered.

“Understood,” FRIDAY replied, and a Legion robot shot above Harley, catching the woman that might’ve crushed him otherwise.

He struggled to breathe for a moment, and Spiderman scrambled in his grasp. His phone was ringing. People were falling out of the sky. Somewhere, Thanos was dead. Harley stared at the destruction, the chaos, the world being resewn but torn apart at the same time.

He stopped himself from throwing up and looked at his phone.

The caller ID read: _ABBIE._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its like i choose what will happen in each chapter and then i take 2000 words to describe something that could be described in 200 and then i need to add a new chapter to the line up because pacing either means too much or nothing at all to me.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> last time on the harley infinity war fic: the avengers went into space, pepper told harley he would own stark industries if they didn't get back within six months, happy is interim ceo, and with may and harley have made a little family. harley met ned and mj and adopted a dog called spiderman. then, people started reappearing. they started falling from the sky where they'd vanished in planes, or in the middle of the road where they'd disintegrated in their cars. it is chaos, and harley is in the middle of it. plus, his newly alive sister is calling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it took four days to write this chapter which is a very long time for me. i was considering just ditching this fic because it was so difficult to write the ending and because it kept dragging out and i hated everything i'd written. then i watched an elizabeth gilbert ted talk where i was essentially told that i didn't need to make a masterpiece, or have everything i created be perfect - i just needed to show up and do the work. so i did. i wrote the final chapter, and it's my personal least favourite chapter (nothing can beat nebula and harley's heart to hearts imo), but it's also ten-fucking-thousand words long and it ties up all the loose ends (hopefully).  
> so i hope you enjoy this, thank you very much for coming on this journey and taking interest in my harley fic. ily you guys

“Abbie? Abbie?”

“Harley?”

Harley choked on the air, forcing his way through the street. He’d walked to the café, rather than taking the driver, but he was glad for that in this moment. He held Spiderman closer to his chest.

“Oh, my God. You’re—you’re back. You’re okay. Are you at home?”

“Yeah? Yeah. I feel really weird, Harley.” He could hear the tell-tale edge to her voice, revealing that she was about to cry. “I don’t know what happened—”

“It’s okay. It is. You’re gonna be fine.”

“I was somewhere weird. I can remember it, kind of. Can you come home now? I know you’re working, but—”

“Abbie, I’m so sorry,” Harley replied. Someone slammed into his shoulder and he hissed but kept moving forward. Iron Legion bots flew above him, people were appearing in thin air, dust from the floor building people feet up, hand’s first, face down. Harley ducked at a gunshot.

“Harley!”

“It’s alright,” he promised. Everyone on the street had jolted. It was someone across the road, now tackled against the sidewalk – they were dressed like they were robbing that jewellery store. They must’ve dusted half way through. “It’s okay.”

“What was that? Where are you?”

“I’m in New York.”

“How are you in New York?” Abbie’s voice was a screech and he winced.

“There’s so much to explain, but I can’t, okay. Ma’s at the diner. You either go straight there and don’t talk to _anyone_ – run until you find her – or you stay inside the house, okay? One or the other. I’m gonna call Ma’s phone in a minute.”

“Harley—”

“Abbie. I’m really, really happy you’re back, but things are kinda chaotic right now.” Someone reappeared in front of him and vomited; dust falling out of their lungs.

“What happened?”

“The world,” Harley said, then stopped. He took a breath. “The universe tore in two, Abbie. You died. You were—you were gone. And the Avengers went to go fix things and bring everyone back.”

There was quiet and then a sob down the line. Harley closed his eyes for a moment, then shook his head. “You’re back now, that’s what matters. Are you gonna stay at home, or—”

“I want Mama.”

“Yeah, yeah I know, Abbie. I do, too.”

“Why aren’t you here?”

“A lot’s happened. I’ve gotta—” He turned the corner, finding a pile up of cars. It was the day of The Snap all over again. It was the same mess, the same chaos and confusion. Only, it wasn’t six cows and a population of three hundred. It was a fucking city, population eight million. “I’m gonna call Ma, and I’m gonna try and find somewhere safe to hide, alright? It’s a fucking warzone out here.”

“Mouth.”

“Yeah yeah. Are you staying at home?”

“Yeah,” Abbie choked. “Yeah. Call Mama. Tell her to come get me.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll call you back as soon as I can, okay?”

“Harley—Harley.”

“Yeah?”

“I’m scared.”

“I know. I am, too. I’ll call you back.”

Harley shoved his phone in his pocket, held his dog closer to his chest and ran. He ran as fast as he could through the jam-packed streets of New York. Four million had become eight in a click of someone’s fingers. _Who’s?_ Harley wondered, in between leaping over a prone body and ducking around someone else’s. The logical answer was Thor or Carol – gods and magical aliens who could handle the power that was seated inside the gauntlet; that swirled around and caught souls, dusting them and reforming from millions of pieces to screaming, hollering bodies.

But Harley, as deep inside as he existed, knew neither of them did this.

Then the world roared.

No, it didn’t. An engine did, from above.

Harley and the hundreds on the street around him stopped for one moment to look up; finding a quinjet materialising in the air, retroreflective panels flickering off above him. There was no room on the street but it didn’t care; it lowered itself down, wind whipping hard at Harley. Spiderman barked in his ear as the bay door lowered.

He didn’t recognise the people who reached out their hands to pull him up, but he knew the quinjet. Harley scrambled one-handed onto a car, its owner yelling _Hey!_ as he did so. The uniforms pulled him up and in, the door hissing shut behind him, Spiderman leaping down from his arms into the pod of the jet.

“Kid.”

Happy Hogan was pacing the width of the quinjet as it shot off back into the sky.

“Happy. Holy shit.”

“I know. You okay?”

“Yeah, yeah—I’m fine. Where are we—”

“The compound. We need to get you back on those scanners.”

“It’s fucking madness out there.”

Happy nodded, his face dark. “I was in a board meeting when half the board came back to life. I looked out the window and people were falling from the sky.”

Harley heard that body hitting the car in the back of his head. It echoed. The crunch of metal. The shattering of glass. The _thump_ of human life beaten out. Spine broken, skull caved, car alarm ringing.

“I need to call my Ma.”

Happy nodded, and Harley fished his phone back out of his pocket. He watched his dog curl up on the floor, their head lowered between their paws. He dialled his Ma’s number and listened to it ring through, no one picking up.

He dialled the diner next, but the number was disconnected.

Harley hissed out his curses and went back to his Ma’s mobile. He got her voicemail – a familiar message he’d heard many times in the past few months. It was the only thing he had with her voice. Her simple, _Melissa Keener. Please leave a message._

She and Abbie pronounced ‘Keener’ like ‘Keena’, southern drawls he’d almost forgotten and stopped noticing in his own voice.

“Mama,” he said. “Call me back when you get this. Abbie’s at home waiting for you. I’m not in Rose Hill, so don’t worry about that. Just call me back. Okay. Love you.”

He shoved his phone away and met Happy’s concerned gaze.

“It’s gonna be alright, kid,” Happy said, and Harley had made and broken a lot of promises since the world went to shit, but Happy had broken none.

He nodded. “Where’s May?”

“The hospital near the compound. I was just on the phone with her. I’ve got a car to fetch her but I think she’ll want to stick around to help out.”

Harley sat down beside Happy and the two fell silent on the ride. It was comfortable, if not tense and concerned. They’d gotten to know each other pretty well in four months, so Happy knew what Harley was thinking.

“Your Mom’s gonna be fine,” Happy said. “And your sister. We’ll get them up here as soon as possible.”

Harley studied Happy’s expression, but there was nothing there that wasn’t earnest. “Thanks, Happy.”

“No problem, kid.”

 

-

 

May wasn’t at the compound when they arrived, and Ma didn’t pick up the phone the next three times. Harley led Spiderman into Peter’s lab, where half the floor was covered in newspaper and chew toys and collapsed back into his chair.

“FRIDAY, are they still off the scanners?”

“Since the distortion that hid their location started, and at least six signals were spotted heading in their direction, the Avengers’ ship has not been reached via the satellites,” FRIDAY replied, one of the screens lighting up. It had to be a purposeful distortion by those ships – they were probably ‘children of Thanos’ or something worse. And if they were still out there, did that mean the Avengers were still fighting?

Harley heaved a long breath and called Abbie back.

She picked up on the second ring. “Harley.”

“Hey—”

“You were supposed to call me right back.”

“I know, sorry. Ma hasn’t picked up the phone for me.”

Abbie was quiet for a moment. “She hasn’t got back yet. Maybe I should go looking for her.”

“No, stay inside,” Harley said. “I’ll make some calls. See if anyone’s seen her.” He didn’t hang up though, just sat there listening to his sister’s breathing in the quiet of the lab. He’d fucking missed her. It wasn’t any one thing. It wasn’t him missing the way she’d always screech if he didn’t knock before entering her bedroom, or how she always moved like she didn’t have full control of her limbs – it was his sister in her entirety. He missed her being around.

“It’s only a ten-minute walk to the diner,” Abbie said after a moment. “She should be back by now.”

“I know,” Harley said. “But it’s probably manic out there. She might just be helping the people who reappeared in the middle of the road or something.”

“Did we really disappear? Just like that?”

Harley nodded, though she couldn’t see. “Just like that, yeah.”

“And you didn’t.”

“I didn’t.”

“And you’re in New York.”

“Yeah, I am.”

Abbie huffed. “Did you go on another adventure with Tony Stark without me? You promised me that the next time you got to go on a coming of age journey with Iron Man that I could come along, too.”

Harley laughed and it felt good. It felt loud and real and he’d missed that, too. “Sorry, Abs. It was a spur of the moment thing. I saved his life, you know?”

“When don’t you?” She huffed. “The news is having a shit-fit over this.”

“Mouth,” Harley said. “Who raised you?”

“You did. But seriously, are people really dyin’ like that? They’re just reappearing in thin air. What’s The Snap?”

“That’s what we call everyone disappearing.”

“That’s a stupid name.”

“I know, but it’s better than The Decimation.”

“Who the hell would call it that?”

Harley heaved a sigh, slumping further into his seat. He was tired. He was worn. He wanted to be back in Rose Hill and he wanted to be out in space, dragging the Avengers home by their ears. “I don’t know. These two guys tried to coin the term but that was stupid, you know? But Thanos – the asshole who did this – he snapped his fingers. So we call it The Snap.”

“Lame.”

“You’re lame.”

“Your mom’s lame.”

“We have the same mom, doofus,” Abbie retorted, and Harley smiled.

“I’ll call around.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll get back to you. Stay indoors.”

“Harley,” FRIDAY said from on high, and Harley hung up the phone. “It seems there are intruders outside the compound.”

Harley frowned. “Intruders?” They hadn’t had intruders once since the Avengers had been away. “Are you sure it’s not just employees reappearing?”

“The employees would not get away with outfits like these – oh, wait a moment.”

“What is it?” Harley was standing in his chair by now, Spiderman’s head raised in vague interest as he headed for the door.

“They are not intruders.”

“Alright.” The door slid open and he stepped out into the hall. “Who are they then?”

“Facial recognition places Peter Parker and Stephen Strange on the lawn outside the compound.”

Harley broke out into a run. The news was right to have a shit-fit. Harley was gonna have one any moment, now.

 

-

 

Peter Parker was not wearing his classic Spiderman suit. He was wearing something shiny and metallic, in a similar colour scheme to Iron Man. _The Iron Spider,_ Pepper had once said, and Harley now saw why she thought it was cute. It was very much a mini-Iron Man armour for Peter Parker.

With him on the lawn, everyone looking dazed and tired and slumping onto the grass, was a wizard, obviously – red cloak and douchy-but-vaguely-magical goatee, like his photo – and an assortment of strangers. One looked human and was probably the Lord-Star-Jerk-Something guy that Tony had mentioned. Another was large and grey, with red geometric tattoos, and the last was female, with round black eyes and antennae poking out of her head.

Harley halted his run before he hit the grass. No one else had come out to see this – the rest of the compound was empty with the effort of saving lives and sorting out the mess outside the gates, and Happy – well, Happy could be anywhere. But he wasn’t here.

Harley was. Which meant Harley was alone, and everyone had looked up at his arrival.

They stared at each other. Blinked. Harley had never planned a Welcome Back to Life speech, though maybe he should’ve. Maybe he should’ve been thinking about this for the past four months, rather than if he could train Spiderman to learn to go outside.

Speaking of – Spiderman the dog (not to be confused with Spiderman the person, standing across the lawn) ran out of the open door, barking and jumping around at Harley’s feet. He stopped for a moment, to study these newcomers, before running over. Because Spiderman the dog loved strangers.

As he barked at the grey man, who frowned back, the wizard – Strange – spoke.

“Is anyone of legal drinking age around to talk?”

Harley rolled his eyes. _Dick._ “Somewhere, probably. How’d you, uh, get back from…?” He looked up. “You know. Space.”

“Portal,” Strange replied. God his name was accurate. _Strange._ Harley hated his goatee. “Are the Avengers around? We need to have a word.” Strange started off in Harley’s direction, while the others looked at each other, before climbing to their feet and following.

“No,” Harley replied.

Strange paused. “They’re not around?”

“They’re in space. You know. Saving the universe.”

Spiderman the dog barked and followed on the grey man’s heels. Harley stepped back as the group came close, his eyes automatically darting to Peter, who hadn’t bothered with his mask, and whose jaw was locked tight. The group stopped where the grass met the pathway.

“Right. That’s a bit of a commute,” Strange agreed. “And who are you? You’ve got a Stark son aura about you – we haven’t been gone that long, have we? What, fifteen years?” Strange looked a little worried about this for just a second and Harley huffed.

“I’m seventeen, _God._ I don’t look that young. And I’m not Tony’s son. Shit—Spiderman, stop peeing on the alien.”

Peter’s head jerked up suddenly. “I’m not—”

“Sorry, no,” Harley said, moving around and picking up his dog, who’d finished their duty already on the grey guy’s foot. He didn’t seem at all perturbed by this action and regarded his foot with mild indifference. “The dog’s called Spiderman.”

Peter blinked. “You named a dog after me?”

“I think Ned did, actually. But I like the name, so—I kept it.”

Peter and Harley met each other’s eyes for a moment, and Harley couldn’t tell what was hidden there. Peter looked vaguely traumatised; eyes glassy, a little out of it. He looked like he could collapse on the spot, maybe. Like he could sleep for a thousand years.

“You know Ned?”

“Excuse me,” Strange interrupted, an edge to his voice. “How _long_ has it been?”

Harley rolled his eyes. He wished Spiderman had peed on the wizard, and maybe Spiderman did too, because he wriggled in Harley’s arms. “Six and a half months,” he said, turning on one foot and starting back up the path. The others paused before following along. “It was a bit of a shitshow for a while there.”

“Half the universe vanished, yes?”

Harley nodded. “Yep. So now they’re out there, fixing things.”

“Alright, I haven’t spoken in a while and I think I should,” the Star-Lord-Who-Knows-His-Name said, loud. “Where are we, exactly?”

“Upstate New York,” Peter replied before Harley had the chance.

“Where’s that?”

“America,” Harley said. “Like, Earth.”

“This is your home planet?” a new voice asked, and Harley found the grey guy looking around with a fresh perspective. “It’s uglier than expected. Why would the sky be this shade of purple?”

“The sky’s blue, dumbass,” Star-Whatever replied.

Harley led them inside, the doors opening when they drew close. “FRIDAY?”

“Yes, Harley?”

“Where’s Happy? Actually, I don’t care. Can you call him down?”

“Of course.” There was a pause. “He’s on his way.”

“What is that?” the female alien asked, her eyes searching for the voice.

“It’s FRIDAY, an AI,” Harley replied. He led them through to the kitchen, where newspaper reigned over flooring, and dropped Spiderman down. “Look out for dog shit,” he said. “Spiderman doesn’t like going outside.”

“That’s something we have in common,” Peter muttered, and Harley glanced back, finding Peter staring at the kitchen. The three strangers all found themselves on the sofas, while Strange seemed a little aggravated by his host and Peter slumped at the kitchen island, his eyes staring at some point on the opposite counter.

Eventually, Happy walked in.

“Finally,” Strange said. “An adult.”

“You’re rude,” Harley huffed. “Like, grade A asshole. Learn some manners.”

Strange rolled his eyes and walked straight past him to talk to Happy – but Happy’s eyes had already landed on Peter, and he moved forward, clasping a hand on Peter’s shoulder. When they hugged a moment later, Harley looked away, his eyes catching on May’s cookbooks on the surface.

“Your Aunt’s fine,” Happy said, somewhere behind him. “She’s at work right now – it’s really hectic – but I was just on the phone with her, and she said she’ll be back as soon as she can. There’s a car waiting for her and everything.”

Harley felt like an intruder very suddenly and moved across the room. But the aliens were there, and he realised that they probably didn’t want him around right now, either. They’d died and come back. They’d seen something on the other side. They’d been torn apart, one shred of existence at a time, and then pieced back together on an alien planet.

The aliens were a family and Happy and Peter were family and—well Strange was unlikable but there were probably people out there that he cared about, too. And Harley’s family—

They were in Tennessee, somewhere.

They were in space, somewhere.

They were May and Happy – but May and Happy were Peter’s family—

Harley scooped up his dog and left.

 

-

 

He’d reached the lab that felt more like Peter’s than ever when his phone rang. _ABBIE._

“Hey,” he said. “I haven’t talked to anyone in town yet, it’s been kind of—”

“Harley?”

“… Mama?”

“Oh my God, _Harley._ ”

 

-

 

There was a knock at the door when Harley was staring at the satellite feed, trying to figure out how to make that unreadable spot readable again. Harley had decided that it still being there couldn’t mean anything, as it took a few days for anything from that distance to reach Earth. Maybe the ships had taken down that dark spot already and the Avengers were on their way back – the information just hadn’t reached him yet.

He’d missed his Ma more than he’d let on, and in this moment he just wanted to go back to Rose Hill and see his family again. He just wanted to see them without seeing the ash they became.

Ma had absolutely reamed him out for being in New York, but she’d understood, too. “You’ve got to come back, though,” she told him. “Now. Soon. Tomorrow.”

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t go back until the Avengers are here. They might need me.”

“You’re seventeen, Harley. You’re a kid, and you need to be at _home._ They’ll make it back, but—”

“I can’t, Ma. I just. I can’t. I’m needed here.”

“You’re needed _here._ ”

“Ma—”

“I’ve been in some strange place for six months, Harley. I have been there, and I _know_ I have because I remember how it smells—Harley. Come. Home.”

Now, Harley looked over his shoulder when someone knocked on the door. Everyone had taken to just entering the lab without permission; he’d become used to finding people in here already, be it Nebula or May, or Spiderman, who’d figured out how to bark loud enough for FRIDAY to open doors for him when he wanted to go into certain rooms.

It wasn’t any of them, though.

It was Peter.

The door was glass, and Harley nodded him in.

Peter had changed out of his Iron Spider suit and wore sweatpants and a Stark Industries t-shirt. His hair was wet, like he’d showered the Titan dust off it, and his feet were bare. He took two steps into the room before stopping, eyes glued to the giant spider symbol on the wall.

He laughed, somewhat nervous. “Either you’re a really big Spiderman fan, or…” he trailed off and Harley swallowed.

“It’s your lab,” he said, though inside he was saying, _No. It’s my lab. For six months now. Mine._

“It’s what?”

“Yours,” Harley said anyway. “Or, it was supposed to be. It was unfinished when everything happened, but Tony said I could use it.”

Peter nodded so Harley did, too, and for a moment, Harley just watched the way Peter looked around the room, as if he was weighing up what was his and what was Harley’s. The spider on the wall – his. The tanks at the end of the room – his. The chemical station in the corner – his.

(The dog bed on the floor – Harley’s. The monitors stacked precariously on the tables, all pushed together – Harley’s. The layout of half-built widow bites and replacement parts to Nebula’s arms – Harley’s.)

“Can I sit?” Peter asked, breaking the silence.

Harley nodded over to the spare chair. “Be my guest.”

Peter padded over, careful to check where he was walking and stepping over a chew toy Spiderman had abandoned. He then rolled the chair to Harley’s desk and took a seat.

“Happy said you found Tony with the Stark satellite,” Peter said. “And found the space stone.” Harley nodded and Peter breathed out, long and slow. “Sorry.”

“What for?”

Peter shook out his hands. “I don’t feel very… substantial, yet. Probably shitty company.”

Harley blinked. “That’s okay.”

Peter nodded, his eyes darting back to the spider symbol, like he was thinking over and over that this was his lab, or was supposed to be, or that this was where he would’ve been had he not dusted at the end of the world. His fingers were twitching and his jaw was still locked, that dazed look in his eyes, like he was in the other place. Wherever the soul stone put him.

Harley sat up. “Do you like dogs?”

“Uh. Sure? I mean, who doesn’t?”

“Exactly.”

Harley stood and pulled Spiderman out from whatever desk he was hiding under and carried him back over. “Peter, meet Spiderman. Spiderman, Peter.”

Peter’s hands automatically came up to hold the dog when Spiderman was placed in his lap. They didn’t shake as much as they stroked Spiderman’s fur, and there was a smile for half a second, before it vanished again.

“I don’t know your name,” Peter said, suddenly.

“Harley. Keener.”

“I’m Peter – you know that already. Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“You, uh, you said you know Ned?”

Harley scratched at Spiderman’s neck, in that one place that always made him go limp and pliable. “Yeah, Midtown had an emergency shelter. I visited one time and your—Ned and MJ were volunteering there. We get coffee whenever I’m in the city.”

Peter nodded, slow. Harley had stopped himself from saying _your friends_ , when they were his now, too. But it still felt odd. He just wanted to break the tension somehow, but _your lack of presence has been its very own entity that I’ve had to avoid while also feeling like it was following me around_ wasn’t a good ice breaker. Neither was _I visited Midtown because I wanted to know you somehow._ Or _I was afraid of you coming back because I built you up in my head and I don’t want you to be less than how I imagined you._

Instead of saying these things, they sat in silence, the monitors lit up blue with diagrams and frequencies, the static on mute, and a dog in Peter’s lap. The moment stretched out long enough that it started to feel ridiculous, being quiet. That there was so much to talk about, to say, and Harley wouldn’t get enough time to go through them all.

“How’s May been?” Peter asked, as if maybe he was feeling the same.

“She’s good. She’s gotten a lot better at cooking.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, it was all nearly inedible for the first few weeks, but she makes a really good lasagne, now.”

Peter pulled a face that was almost like a smile. “And what’s all this?” He gestured vaguely to the monitors.

“Scanning deep space.”

“How deep?”

“A few galaxies away.”

Peter’s eyes widened. “That’s not possible.”

“It’s totally possible, look, I’m doing it. That, there,” Harley said, pointing to the distortion, “is where the Avengers are. It’s where the space stone’s signal came from.”

“And what’s that?” he nodded to another screen.

“Oh, that’s what space sounds like.” Harley flicked it on, and the familiar static of space filled the lab.

Peter sat up. “Like Wanda Diaz Merced?”

“Exactly like Wanda Diaz Merced! Did you see her TedTalk?”

“Of course I saw her TedTalk, it was amazing. A blind astronomer _listening to space?_ That’s ground breaking.”

“I know! I used her research to listen, as well.”

“And it helped?”

Harley waved his hand side to side, catching the interest and light in Peter’s eyes. “I found the space stone without it, but there was definitely a glitch in the sound whenever there was a pulse of space stone energy. So that was cool, not entirely helpful though.”

“How did you even manage to listen that far?”

“I used the Stark satellite to locate other ones,” Harley replied, clicking across one monitor until the full list, three-hundred strong, appeared. He handed the mouse over to Peter, who scrolled through it.

“I don’t even know these languages,” Peter said, one hand around Spiderman.

“They’re alien.”

“You can _not_ read alien.”

Harley laughed. “No, but Nebula can.”

“Who’s Nebula?”

“Uh, blue lady, cyborg. She was with you guys—”

“Oh yeah, I remember her. She’s scary looking.”

“She’s scary, period. But the language centre of her brain was replaced with cybernetic data storage of languages. So while she was on Earth, we translated the satellites together until I could access them, but after she went with the Avengers to murder her Dad, I used a copy of her storage file to do the translating. It’s slow going, but it works.”

Peter shook his head. “That’s so cool. I can’t believe I was stuck in an orange lake for six months while you were learning alien languages and befriending a cyborg.”

“An orange lake?”

“God, I hate the colour orange now. You know, having access to other planets’ satellites could totally open trade between our galaxies, right? We could have _vacations on planet_ – uh. I can’t read that.”

“I think it’s Contraxia,” Harley said. “I did a little nosing around in their systems—” he took the mouse from Peter and clicked on it, until a list of information dropped down. “Yeah. They’re in our galaxy, but they’re just a planet of brothels.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yeah. Nebula said they’re like, robotic brothels, if that makes it any better.”

“It doesn’t,” Peter confirmed. “It really doesn’t. Knowing aliens fuck robots doesn’t help anything here.”

Harley shrugged. “Humans do it, too, you know.”

“Stop talking.”

“I’m just saying—”

“I’m begging you.”

“Sex robots exist—”

“This is the worst conversation I’ve ever had.” Peter was smiling though. So, Harley smiled, too.

 

-

 

Harley only saw a little of Peter reuniting with May. He saw them embrace so tight he was worried that Peter might make May burst. Then he turned back to the _Guardians_ as they called themselves ( _morons_ , as Nebula referred to them), and tried to explain to them why _Footloose_ was such a bad movie and recommended a few other ones.

The alien woman was quite receptive to this, but the grey man was clearly bored easily and the human just rolled his eyes and muttered _it’s no Footloose_ under his breath at every suggestion.

 

-

 

The seven of them ate dinner together. The wizard disappeared early on, but the others stayed, crowded around on sofas, eating pizza and fries and hamburgers and every other food they’d been craving for six months. Initially, Peter sat with May, but somewhere in the meal he slipped down onto the floor where Harley and Spiderman sat. He was quiet until Harley asked about his opinions on _Star Wars_ and then about Batman and Harley caught the smiles Happy and May sent each other while the boys talked, because this was the best result they could have asked for.

Peter, still traumatised, sick of the colour orange, but full of light.

 

-

 

“Alright, yo, wassup,” Harley said into the mic.

“You can’t start it like that,” Peter said beside him.

“Of course I can. It’s my satellite.”

“It’s Mr Stark’s satellite.”

Harley shot him a look. “Do you want to be a part of this or not? Because you can sit over there in the naughty corner with Spiderman if you want.”

Peter shook his head. “No, no, here’s fine.”

“Okay then.” Harley turned back to the mic, still broadcasting. “What up, it’s your boi, Harley.” Peter burst out laughing. Harley grinned. “I’m calling the Avengers to let you know, you did it, you’re good. Half the universe has reappeared and it’s a fucking mess.”

“You can’t say that.”

“I’m being truthful,” Harley retorted. “Tony wanted to know if he was coming back to a rioting Earth and, well, he is. We didn’t think through how bringing people back to life would work. A lot of people are dead. But Peter’s not! Peter’s here. Say hello, Peter.”

“Hello, Peter.”

“Hilarious.”

“Please don’t stop by Titan on your way back to Earth, because we’re not there. Dr Strange portalled us back to Earth.”

“Do you think his goatee looks pretentious and douchey because I do.”

“You cannot say that in a recording being sent across the galaxy.”

“I so can. Deep space, the furthest human life has ever gone, is now and forever going to know that goatees look super dumb.”

“Mr Stark has a goatee.”

“Case in point.”

 

-

 

Then it was a waiting game.

The journey to the other galaxy had taken a month at the very least, and so the world had to reassemble itself with only a handful of Avengers, pieced back together by magic stones and the wind. King T’Challa and Princess Shuri were alive again, back on the thrones of Wakanda. Within two days, the Rogue Avengers were on American soil without repercussions – Scarlet Witch, Falcon, Bucky Barnes. And an alien tree called Groot, who Harley didn’t recognise but thought was pretty cool all the same. They climbed out of a sleek, black car at the gates to the compound, where the remaining people stared from the top of the steps, before heading back inside.

Then the population of the compound expanded. Harley and Happy and May had to explain to everyone who was gone what had happened in the months they were missing. The aftermath of the world ending. Finding Tony in space. Carol Danvers. The space stone, the satellites, Steve and Tony becoming reluctant allies and friends. Pepper Potts in her Rescue armour. Happy as interim CEO of Stark Industries.

When they were finished with the explanation, FRIDAY announced that more people had arrived, and they told it again. To _Nick fucking Fury_ and _Maria shitting Hill._

And then they waited. And rebuilt. And watched the world try to make sense of everything that had happened.

People searching lots for their cars and arguing with landlords about their homes, now rented out to other tenants. Watched as laws had to be put in place in every country to decide who was in the right – the people who were dead for six months or those that had to move on. And throughout it, those that had died and come back were listless and then bounding; were absent and suddenly back in full force.

Because it was easy to be normal when you were alive, but in the moments when you remembered that you hadn’t always been, it became impossible.

There was Peter, one moment, not leaving his room or staring off into space, mind somewhere else, and there he was the next, asking Harley about Rose Hill and his projects and his eyes widening with excitement when he saw the webshooters Harley had made, and talking his ear off about how long the web formula took.

They were there, alive and substantial, and then they were not; their hearts and minds and souls stuck in an orange lake in another place entirely, their beings lethargic and empty.

 

-

 

“Harley, there are people at the gate trying to enter,” FRIDAY announced, only a few days after the world stopped ending one way and started ending in another.

“And you’re telling me because…? There are always people at the gates, FRIDAY.” Harley span in his desk chair in Peter’s lab – _his_ lab? – and looked towards the camera in the corner, where FRIDAY watched from.

“These people claim to know you.”

“And who are they?”

“Melissa and Abigail Keener.”

Harley jumped out of his chair. “And you couldn’t just let them in?” Spiderman leaped to his feet as Harley moved to the door.

“I wanted to check with you first, as is the protocol.”

“Well, let them in! I’ll meet them out front.”

Harley ran up down the hall and round the stairwell. He darted through the lobby, once again beginning to fill with government officials and employees; Thaddeus Ross and his cronies talking in a circle, waiting to be seen. It must’ve been an odd sight to see a kid and his dog racing through the room, but Harley didn’t give a moment to think about it.

He saw his family before they saw him. _Not ash. Not dust. Not gone._

They were alive, and Harley’s heart burst inside his chest.

 

-

 

“I wondered where my watch went,” Abbie said, later, on the sofa with Spiderman. Behind them, Melissa was talking with May at the kitchen island, and Peter had trudged out of his room, looking half dead to the world.

Harley glanced down at the Dora the Explorer watch on his wrist, below the one Tony had given him. Two watches. Like a jackass.

“I took your mood ring, too.”

“I _knew_ it was you! _Ma_ , Harley stole my stuff!”

Their Ma waved a vague hand and Harley scoffed. “You were dead. I get to take your stuff when you’re dead.”

Abbie glared at him, but it was half hearted. _Dead_ was a heavy word to throw around before dinner. “Well, where is it?”

Harley paused. “Space.”

“What?!”

He shrugged, indifferent, and Peter landed on the sofa next to him, pulling his feet onto the cushions.

“Harley! Why is my ring in space?”

“I gave it to an alien cyborg as a token of our friendship,” Harley replied. “She’ll bring it back.”

Abbie opened her mouth and closed it again. She blinked four times and huffed. “You’re the worst.”

“I helped save the world. There are definitely worse people than me.”

“You know, Mama wasn’t gonna mention it, but we know you totally took our money when you left.”

“Of course I did. It was the apocalypse, Abs. I really think you’re overreacting to all this.”

She pouted, crossing her arms and sinking into the sofa. Harley huffed and leaned across the cushion, lying against her until she wriggled and complained. Harley caught Peter’s eye, who was watching with a tilted head and blank expression, and shifted until more of his weight was on his sister. Abbie groaned.

“My money was with my diary. You didn’t read it, did you?”

“No,” Harley replied, mild. “I was gonna, but you had just disintegrated, so I thought it was in bad taste.”

Abbie knocked her forehead against Harley’s arm. “I better get my mood ring back.”

 

-

 

Ned and MJ came to the compound. The four of them sat on the grass with Spiderman (originally because they were trying to make him do his business, and when he wouldn’t, they decided to sit down until he did), and talked as they cloud-gazed.

“How is everyone else?” Peter asked.

“Betty led the Emergency Shelter,” Ned said, making MJ scoff.

“Ned’s got a crush on Betty.”

“Do not!”

“Do too!”

“Is Betty that blonde girl?” Harley asked, casting his mind back to the Midtown Shelter.

“Yeah,” MJ said.

“Oh yeah, she’s cute. Get it, Ned.”

Ned, flustered, made a bunch of protesting noises, but said nothing as MJ and Peter laughed.

“Who was that guy? He sat with her at the front desk the day I came round.”

“Flash?” MJ asked.

“Oh, God, yeah. Knew he had a dumb name.”

“Flash is Peter’s bully,” Ned explained. Harley saw a cloud that looked a little like a bunny but mostly like an amorphous blob.

“He’s chilled out since half the universe vanished, though,” MJ said.

“If he’s a bully though, I’d like to kick his ass,” Harley told them. It was definitely an amorphous blob.

“No kicking his ass,” Peter said.

“Why not? I could do it. I’ve done it before.”

“No, you haven’t,” Peter replied, mild.

“Okay, so I haven’t, but I could totally do it.”

“Sure, you can. But we’re gonna be nice and see if he’s less of a dick now that the world has collectively experienced mass trauma.”

“Oh, hey,” Ned said, sitting up. “I think I just saw Spiderman pee.”

Harley snorted as he sat up. “Great. Good job, buddy. Doesn’t it feel better to take a leak outside?”

“Having a dog named after me is really weird, guys.”

“The dog’s not named after you,” MJ said. “It’s named after Spiderman.”

Peter rolled his eyes. The skies were clear, and the Avengers didn’t come home.

(The second they got back inside, Spiderman took a dump on the floor.)

 

-

 

There were press conferences held every other day. And Thaddeus Ross came around more often than not, shooting Harley looks whenever he sat in on meetings, shooting Peter looks when he did it too.

“We don’t need children in confidential meetings,” Ross had told Sam Wilson the first time they sat in on them. Sam had shrugged and looked to Harley and Peter, sitting at one end of the table.

Harley rolled his eyes. “I saved the world. I get to sit in on confidential meetings.”

Peter shrugged. “Mr Stark would let me if he were here. Also,” he turned to Harley, “your ego is getting pretty big, mind reigning it back a little?”

Harley snorted and Thaddeus Ross glared in their direction for the next hour.

And still, the Avengers did not come home.

 

-

 

Three and a half weeks after the universe felt full again, Harley span in his desk chair as Peter sat at the chemical station across the room, making enough web formula to last him a few months. It wasn’t strange that there was someone else in the lab, it was just strange that it was Peter.

It was also strange, to Harley at least, that Peter had never once asked for his lab, or for Harley to leave it, or offered a different room entirely for Harley to stay. There was a spider on the wall. That meant it was Peter’s.

But still, they worked in relative peace, until the monitor pinged.

Harley stopped spinning.

“You’re shitting me.”

“Did MJ unfriend you on Facebook already? She does that. I once shared a _What Onion Are You?_ Buzzfeed quiz and she unfriended me for two weeks. I wouldn’t put her and Facebook in the same sentence but she uses it to observe the status quo. I got Yellow Onion, by the way.”

Harley stared at Peter for three seconds and then shook his head, turning back to the screen.

The distortion that had shrouded the Avengers right before half of the universe returned had finally gone. It hadn’t moved in three weeks. The Avengers ship hadn’t moved in three weeks. Harley had sent out that same audio recording every day and not received a reply, but—

The distortion was gone, and the ship the Avengers left in was back on the scanners.

“They’re alive,” Harley said. _At least, one of them had to be._

-

 

At two AM, three nights later:

“This is the Avengers, calling Earth. We received your message, Keener. Harley one, professionalism zero. We’re on our way back. There have been a few hiccups, but nothing we can’t handle. Thanos has been killed. I repeat, Thanos is dead. We’ll tell you the whole story when we get back. And, uh. Peter. It’s really good to hear your voice, kid. We’ll be back as soon as possible.”

 

-

 

_“In an official Avengers press conference, Sam Wilson confirmed contact from the Avengers. It has been a month since people came back to life after The Snap, and there had been no word from Earth’s heroes on their whereabouts or their safety.”_

Sam Wilson was on screen. _“Last night, we received a broadcast from the Avengers, confirming Thanos’ death. There was no mention of how many of the Avengers are alive, but it sounds as if a few of them are. Tony Stark for certain, however, as he recorded the message.”_

_“Will we get to hear the message?”_

_“Uh, no. I can read you a transcript of the important parts, but parts of the message have been asked to remain confidential due to their personal nature.”_ He lifted a piece of paper. _“The official transcript is as follows: This is the Avengers, calling Earth… We are on our way back…”_

-

 

Peter dropped his cereal bowl.

The sound of it hitting the floor was ear-splitting in the silence of the kitchen. The milk splashed across the newspaper floor, the china shattering on impact. The cereal itself was everywhere, a pile of mush on the ground.

Harley jerked from where he sat at the kitchen island with his own bowl.

“Peter? Shit. What was—” He frowned. Peter hadn’t moved; just stayed frozen on the spot. “Peter? You good?”

Harley slipped down from the stool and moved around the mess on the floor – Spiderman was already doing his best to clean it up, anyhow – until he was at Peter’s front. Peter’s eyes were unfocused, staring in a daze. His hands were still in the position they had been when he held the bowl.

“Hey, Peter.” Harley stepped over the shards of china, until he could place a hand on Peter’s shoulder. Peter didn’t move. “You wanna sit down? I think we should sit down. How about on the sofa? It’s more comfortable than the kitchen…”

Harley led Peter across the room, the other boy pliable and silent; even sitting when Harley nudged him down. Looking at him now, Harley was reminded of Tony, back when Harley was little and causing panic attacks left, right and centre. Only this time, Harley wasn’t causing it, and this time, Peter was silent. There was no chasing air or shaking hands. There was no collapsing in snow or trembling voice. He was silent and frozen.

Harley leaned him back against the cushions and then, after thinking it through for about four seconds, leant back beside him, so their arms were touching.

“I don’t really know what to do here, Peter. But take your time. Come back when you’re ready. I’ll be here. I can phone May, if you want that. She’s at work, but she’ll come right back.” He hummed. “Do you want the dog? Or? Alright… I never told you about how Tony and I met, did I? I mean, I know we’ve known each other for a month, but it’s not like we’ve _known_ each other. I spent a lot of my time with Abbie and Ma at first, before they went back to Rose Hill. And it’s like, we’re in the same room and sometimes we’re friends and other times we’re just thrown together. Okay, so Tony and I met when I was twelve. It was around Christmas time, middle of the night, and I hear a thump coming from the shed. Now, I’m tiny, mind you, but I’m strong. I’m brave. I have a potato gun. So, I creep downstairs…”

(When Peter finally came back from wherever he went, his entire body relaxed. He murmured a thank you, and then, “I wondered why you wore that Dora the Explorer watch every day.”)

 

-

 

Time kept passing and the Avengers’ ship moved slowly through the cosmos. It jumped around a little, went back and forth, stopped at planets Harley didn’t have information on, and sent messages infrequently. But as far as Harley could tell, they were helping people. They were stopping by the broken planets, by the hubs of the galaxies, and seeing what they could do.

They were trying to get back to Earth, where their loyalties lied – but they were saviours to the entire universe, not just to humanity.

“There are a lot of people out there that want to thank us,” Tony had said in a message. “And while it’s great that we’re meeting them and fostering relationships with alien life forms or whatever, we just want to get home.”

So, Earth waited. And it waited. And the Avengers took their damn time getting back.

 

-

 

The day they had been gone six months, the lawyers arrived.

Which Harley had entirely forgotten about, considering the Avengers were alive and coming home. It had stopped being a worry, because Tony was coming, and he’d heard Pepper in another message – that was both Stark Industries owners accounted for. Harley didn’t need to worry about the lawyers anymore. But, on a Saturday morning, seven men and women in suits stood in a glass-walled conference room, and Harley, in his pyjamas, stood out in the hall, staring in.

He pressed his knuckles against his mouth, and a few of the lawyers glanced over to him from time to time, but none of them made a move to call him in just yet. Maybe it was the fact that he looked close to freaking out. Maybe it was the novelty Avengers t-shirt that he’d worn to bed the night before.

Abbie and his Ma had already gone back to Rose Hill, to help the town rebuild and redistribute all the farm animals. He could’ve done with them right now. Abbie because she’d tell him he was being an idiot and he’d want to go in there just to get away from her, and Ma because she was an adult who had some semblance of a clue what he should be doing.

But he was alone in the hallway.

And the lawyers were in there, ready to sign the company over to him. Harley Keener. The child that Tony had met when he broke into his house. The child who had a potato gun and sent him into multiple panic attacks. The child that snapped off Iron Man’s finger within minutes of seeing the suit for the first time.

He couldn’t run a _company._ He couldn’t take on Stark Industries – especially considering the fact that Tony and Pepper were on their way back. They were coming. It was difficult to tell how long it would be, but they were definitely going to be back on Earth some time. Though, Harley had spotted a number of ships in their location again, following their route almost exactly. That was nerve-wracking enough – what if space pirates were out there, hunting them down? What if space pirates killed the Avengers right after they saved the universe? (Or, two months after they saved the universe, he supposed.)

Harley pressed his knuckles against his mouth until it hurt, then jerked his head to the right when he heard footsteps.

“Kid!” Happy said, shaking his head. “What are you doing out here?”

“The lawyers are here.”

“Right.”

“And Tony and Pepper are coming back, but they’re here, and—”

“Calm down,” Happy said, pulling Harley’s hand from his mouth. “Anything you sign for today can be signed away tomorrow.”

“What?”

“Those lawyers aren’t leaving without your signature. It’s their job. So, sign away, and then when Tony and Pepper come back, you can give the company back. Easy peasy.”

“Lemon squeezy.”

“Exactly, kid. Go be a child billionaire for a few days. Don’t spend all of their money before they get back.”

“Right, right, right.”

 

-

 

“Peter.”

“Harley.”

“I’m a child billionaire for like the next three days.”

Peter blinked. “Please be telling me this because you want to buy us PS4s.”

 

-

 

The Avengers came back on a Friday.

Despite Harley’s new position of power (which would absolutely have gone to his head if Peter hadn’t followed him around, throwing out insults and keeping him humble), Happy stayed Interim CEO, and would’ve until Harley turned twenty-one.

But then, on a Friday, as Harley was crouched in the garden, looking Spiderman square in the eye and saying the words “Shit. Poop. Do a dump. Seriously, just let one rip. I’ll give you a treat. Six treats. A back rub. A girl dog to fall in love with. I’ll buy you a mansion just for yourself. I can do that now,” an alarm blared in the compound.

It was a sunny Friday morning, and Harley didn’t think it was the intruder alarm. He pulled out his phone, and FRIDAY’s voice announced, “Multiple ships have entered Earth’s atmosphere.”

“What?”

“The Avengers ship seems to be among them.”

So, either the Avengers had led their hunters back to Earth, or—

Harley looked up and saw it. He stood, and it was just like that day on the roof, when Tony came home. Something burning in the atmosphere, way up in the sky, getting closer and closer. There were other ships, too, but they were further back, slower.

“Oh, my God.”

Harley picked up Spiderman and took him inside, where the remaining Avengers were gathering with various employees. It was May’s day off, and she ran her fingers through Harley’s hair when he came close, sending him a smile before focusing on the main ruckus in the room. No one knew what to do or how to act; the Avengers had finally come home.

 

-

 

Steve Rogers was the first one out of the ship, looking no worse for wear but donned in clothes that were definitely not made for Earth, and definitely planned for a creature with at least one extra limb.

Then Thor, eye patch intact. The racoon, Rocket, who immediately ran to the tree alien that had been skulking around the compound for two months. Carol Danvers. Natasha Romanoff.

One by one they filed out, all of them alive, limbs intact, tired and worn but victorious.

Harley was practically vibrating as he waited. In none of the messages had Tony ever said if anyone was dead, but as Harley counted, they were all there. Rhodey and Bruce and people Harley didn’t recognise. A dark-skinned woman with a cape. A green-skinned woman who Peter Quill ran towards without a moment’s hesitation. Harley recognised Loki, because Loki had once invaded Earth, and was known worldwide as a _bad guy_ – so his presence was confusing at the very least.

Everyone was there. One by one by one.

Finally, Pepper Potts stepped out. Her hair was cut off up to her shoulders, and her face held a few cuts and bruises, but it also lit up in the widest smile when she spotted him and ran over.

Harley was engulfed in a hug. “I’m glad you’re okay,” he said into her shoulder.

“I’m glad _you’re_ okay,” Pepper replied. “You did so good.” She pulled back and cupped his face. “If your mother’s back, do I have to give up custody? Because I quite liked having you here.”

Harley laughed. “They already passed a law dismissing custody agreements since The Snap. You’d have to fight it in court.”

“I could do that.”

He grinned. “Too late. I turned eighteen last month.”

Her face fell slack. “I can’t believe I missed it. We’re gonna throw you a party. And get you presents.” Pepper Potts hadn’t been on Earth for six months, but she was the one who took him in, and looked after him, and kept him safe without hesitating. She’d met him and decided to trust him and invite him into her family. When Pepper hugged him again, he hugged her back.

Over her shoulder, he saw a familiar sight: a blue-skinned alien cyborg helping Tony Stark out of the ship.

It was Peter that ran over to him, unlike last time, when Thor had picked him up bridal style and carried him into the compound. And when Tony spotted him, he pulled his arm from around Nebula’s shoulders and grabbed onto Peter for all he was worth.

And it was because Harley was at this distance, not immediately running over and embracing Tony, that he saw it.

He saw how Tony’s left arm was severed at the elbow.

 

-

 

“This feels familiar,” Harley said, entering Tony’s room in the medbay. Unlike last time, Tony was sitting on the end of the bed, as the doctors looked at his arm and the alien medicine that had been applied to it.

“Total déjà vu,” Tony agreed with a smile. He used his good arm to pull Harley into a side hug, and Harley grinned.

“How’d you do that?” Harley asked, nodding to the arm.

“Wielded a tacky gold gauntlet.”

Harley shook his head. “I had a feeling it would be you.”

Tony sighed. “I heard we missed your birthday.”

“News travels fast.”

“Also heard you still haven’t potty trained that dog.”

“I’m trying! He’s so disobedient. I don’t know what to do about him.”

“So your answer was to cover every surface with newspaper?”

“Well this way the floor doesn’t get pooped on, you know?”

When Tony smiled, it was soft. “It’s good to see you, kid.”

“Yeah, you too, Tony.”

 

-

 

“It’s blue,” Nebula said, sitting by Harley’s side in his lab. He looked over to her – she hadn’t spoken to him since they arrived, instead reuniting with the _morons_ that she claimed to be indifferent about. Apparently, the green girl was her sister. Aliens, man.

“What is?”

“The ring.”

“Oh.” He looked at it, blue as the sky on her robotic hand. “That means you’re happy.”

“Does it?”

He nodded. He’d once memorised all the meanings for Abbie, because she kept forgetting them, and there wasn’t much point to wearing the ring if she didn’t know what the colours meant.

She looked reluctant and almost angry when she said, “Your ring is very astute.”

Harley paused. “You should keep it.”

“I thought I was to return it to you.”

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “But I’m pretty sure Abbie won’t mind if a scary alien cyborg wants to have it.”

Nebula studied it with forced indifference and Harley kept his smile supressed. “Not want, but… it goes with my outfit.”

“Yeah. It does.”

Nebula nodded and lowered her hand. It seemed like she wanted to speak but had nothing to say, so Harley smiled and said, “You know how you said your fingers keep twitching? I took some scans before you left and I think it’s faulty wiring, so while you were gone I was working on a fix for it, and I came up with a few ideas.”

And Nebula wasn’t _smiling_ , but the mood ring was still blue.

 

-

 

The ships that had followed the Avengers back to Earth were Ravagers, and they were Peter Quill’s family, like all the people in the compound were Harley’s. Like the people in Rose Hill were, like May and Happy, like Tony and Pepper, like Nebula, like Peter.

They were aliens from far off planets, who had provided the distortion on the signal way back when to cover their tracks while they searched for and fought Thanos. The Ravagers had helped in the battle, too, with Thanos’ alien dog creatures, with his remaining ‘children’, (while Nebula struck the killing blow and Tony took up the gauntlet) and they’d guided the Avengers back through space, to different planets for medical attention and supplies, and finally back to Earth, where they hovered in the atmosphere like watchful guardians, waiting for the _actual_ Guardians to come home.

When they did; when the aliens boarded their ship and left Earth, it was an odd day. Having Drax and his horrible humour around had been a staple, and Mantis and her empathy. Peter Quill had a bad taste in movies, but Harley had downloaded about ten thousand onto a drive and given it to him to take back to space, and Quill promised that the galaxy would hear of Bruce Willis and the ultimate Christmas film of _Die Hard._

He hadn’t known Gamora, the green alien, nor the angry raccoon, but it was strange to see them go. Sad to see Groot and his unlearnable language go, and just plain awful to say goodbye to Nebula.

She didn’t hug him, because that wasn’t her thing, but she placed a hand on his shoulder and smiled, and the ring was grey – sad – and she said, “Tell me what you’ve learned,” and Harley replied, “Be curious and aim for the head of anyone who stops me.”

“Correct. Thank you for helping me end my father, Harley.”

Harley nodded. She had to phrase it in the worst way possible, but, “Anytime. You better visit.”

“Or maybe you should build a space ship and visit me.”

And then they were gone.

 

-

 

“So,” Tony said, his left arm from the elbow down a thing of history (unless Helen Cho’s cradle was as promising as she made it sound), “we have a lot to discuss.”

Peter looked up from where he was eating cereal at three in the afternoon. “We do?”

“Not you. _You._ ” He pointed to Harley.

“What have I done now?”

“What _haven’t_ you done?”

Pepper came in and seated herself beside Harley on the sofa. “I’m here to intimidate you.”

“That’s fair. Why?”

“Because you currently own my company,” she replied, and Harley laughed, bright.

“You’ve been back for a week and you only just realised?”

“Time means nothing in space, kid,” Tony said, sitting on the coffee table. “Happy mentioned it to us about an hour ago. And apparently you made some _purchases_ while we were gone.”

Harley cracked a smile. “The ‘Stark Fortune’, as it’s been referred to,” Harley said, “gains over two hundred thousand dollars per minute. If I spent a billion dollars, you could make that back in three-point-four days.”

Tony sniffed. “I know how obscenely wealthy I am.”

“Keyword: _obscenely._ I just spread the wealth a little. It was Peter’s idea.”

“Don’t drag me into this,” Peter said. “I did _nothing._ ”

“You gave me an itemised list of the charities, shelters and organisations you thought we should make donations to.”

Peter pointed his spoon at Harley. “This is true.” He looked to Tony. “I did a little more than nothing.”

Neither of the adults seemed even vaguely annoyed, and Pepper shook her head with a smile. “You kept some for your college fund, right?”

“Yeah, and I made one for Abbie, too. And Ma. She’s been wanting to get her bachelor’s for twenty years.”

Tony sighed, but his lips were curled upwards, and he looked a little less tired than he had all week. “You’re good kids,” he said. “But I’m going to need my company back.”

 

-

 

(Harley had been given a taste of wealth and he didn’t want to let it go. Tony promised him a position in the company after he’d got his degree, rolling his eyes as if it were ever a question, and Harley also mentioned to Pepper, when the others were gone to call lawyers and draw up paperwork, that he wanted to do something with the Maria Stark Relief Foundation, too. That responsibility, fixing, helping was as much a part of Harley as anything else. She’d placed a hand on his shoulder, and unlike the first time she had, it didn’t drop.)

 

-

 

The day before Harley left New York, he cleared out his lab of the newspaper and piled the spare dog bed into his Mustang, barely used except for long drives into the city or to clear his head. He stared at the mess he’d made; the monitors all joined together, and the tables pushed into the centre of the room.

His lab.

(“Pete, I’ll get you a lab as soon as possible, alright?” Tony had said over dinner one night.

“What about the lab I work in?” Harley asked.

Tony blinked at him. “That’s your lab.”

“It was supposed to be Peter’s—”

Tony waved a hand. “I’ll get Peter his own, it’s not like we’re lacking the space. That’s yours, buddy, don’t worry about it.”)

Harley ate dinner with Peter, May, Tony, Pepper and Happy, and it was like a family. Another one. A family within all the other families they’d built. A family Harley hadn’t seen coming, would never have guessed six months ago.

That night, he watched the stars from the roof, like he would back in Rose Hill. It was so rare that he saw the stars up here, not like in Tennessee, where there was no light pollution to keep him from seeing everything up there. Yet, Harley knew, it was in New York that he could see further into the cosmos than ever before. _There is no human alive who has seen as much of the universe as Harley has in this moment._

The moment had long passed, but he had still done it. He’d lived it. He’d been curious and he’d searched the stars and looked further than anyone else had.

Peter sat by his side beneath the universe. “Thanks for looking after everyone,” he said, quiet.

“You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“I know. But I wasn’t here to do it. And when I was… you looked after me, too. Thank you for that.”

Harley smiled. “I’m glad you live up to the legend.”

“The legend?”

“The stories everyone told about you. They were just… pretty accurate, is all.”

Peter knocked his shoulder against Harley’s. It felt like friendship.

 

-

 

Harley stood in a field, the sky bright and blue above him. It was no New York. No skyscrapers or packed streets. Just three hundred people in a small, dusty town. He wasn’t sure if it was his speed anymore, but he loved it all the same.

“Hey, Tallulah,” he greeted, stepping through the grass to where the only black and white cow in the field stood. She mooed, which Harley took as a response as he patted her flank. He wasn’t shovelling manure today, just visiting. He’d heard Miss Margaret had a problem with her television and Harley was in the neighbourhood.

He’d go back to New York, soon. He’d go back, and maybe see a regeneration cradle up close, and maybe watch Spiderman in action, or do his bit to save the world again. But for now, he was in Rose Hill with his Ma and his sister and his dog.

For now, the world wasn’t ending, and he could breathe under a bright blue sky, back where it all started. In Rose Hill, Tennessee, population three hundred, and six cows.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so much for reading! pretty please leave me a comment below, and if you've suddenly realised how much you love harley through this honest to god harley-centric novella, i have a series called wayward sons that is about harley and peter being best friends and their ensuing shenanigans.
> 
> thank you for taking the time to read this fic, ily you guys
> 
> love from the harley keener co-authority of the marvel fandom, tempestaurora  
> (ps: come yell at me on tumblr, same url)
> 
> EDIT: THANK YOU to elenath-s for the fan art of harley and spiderman, while spiderman refuses to take a shit. i didn't know this would be inspiring for anyone to draw, but here we are now

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! pretty please leave a kudos and talk to me in the comments because if u don't i just.... won't post the rest of the fic lmao. i need validation to write faster. that's how this goes
> 
> ily you guys bye now


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